As many as 19.72 lakh school students of Class V to X across Kerala have been equipped with basic skills to prevent the spread of fake news through social media and understand the truth behind transacted messages. Announcing the completion of the third phase of the Satyameva Jayathe digital media literacy programme, General Education Minister V.Sivankutty said 5,920 trainers had been deployed to reach out to 9.48 lakh Upper Primary students and 10.24 lakh High Schools students.
The Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) has completed the fake news prevention and awareness programme, he said.
The programme rolled out on February 10 during the Covid-19 pandemic, focused on awareness creation through the KITE VICTERS educational channel in the first phase. While the second phase of the programme began in June 2021 , the third phase commenced from August 2022 using a special training module. DGHSS Tanur in Malappuram district had the maximum number of students trained (3,691) in the Government school category while St Marys HSS Pattom in Thiruvananthapuram district topped in the aided school category (7,467 students).
Each student was provided with 2.5 hours duration training in four sections covering Use of Internet in Day-to-day life, Rights and Wrongs in Social Media and how to prevent spread of Fake News. The training also focused on areas such as understanding the influence of digital media in information transaction, creating urge towards knowing non-factual interference in digital media and how to react to them in a constructive manner, acquiring technical knowledge in understanding the truth behind transacted messages and developing skills to identify and react to glitches in information transaction through media literacy . It also included specific areas such the meaning and definition of misinformation and disinformation and their impact in society.
“ In addition to the training programme for students, for general public KITE VICTERS channel will telecast all these classes in four episodes starting October 10 to 13 at 7 p.m, “ said K.Anvar Sadath, CEO, KITE.
