Fact-checking experts Ogunbamowo and Ojo speak at Legit.ng and LEAP Africa's YDOS 2023 Media Literary Webinar
- In August 2023, Legit.ng entered into a partnership with LEAP Africa through the Youth Day of Service 2023 platform to promote youth media literacy in Nigeria and drive sustainable change
- Legit.ng and LEAP Africa hosted over 100 Nigerian youths virtually on Zoom and 3000 on Facebook live respectively, to discuss digital citizenship and online etiquettes
- The impact partners have called on all Nigerians to shun misinformation and disinformation and help in the fight against this societal ill.
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2023 YDOS Media Literacy Webinar, organised by Legit.ng and LEAP Africa, brought together various stakeholders from the media and impact sectors of Nigeria. The virtual event was held to promote media literacy as a tool for social change and round off the Youth Day of Service (YDOS) agenda for 2023. It attracted media enthusiasts from different parts of Africa: Malawi, Cameroun, Kenya, and Nigeria, to mention a few.
Legit.ng who took on a commitment to promote media literacy among the Nigerian youths in 2022 introduced this new conversational phase, following its receipt of the WAN-IFRA ‘Best Trust Initiative’ award at the 2023 World Digital Media Awards in Taiwan. The leading digital media publisher was recognised for its preservation of journalism in Africa through its media literacy project. Legit.ng had also expressed that young people are more connected than ever through social media platforms, online communities, and digital communication channels, making them the most viral spreading channel for news of any kind.
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Through a collaborative webinar with youth developmental NGO, LEAP Africa, Legit.ng worked at reaching a new youth audience to help them navigate the digital world and learn the best ways to consume and cascade news.
Webinar topic: Digital Citizenship and Online Etiquette
Editor-in-Chief at Legit.ng, Rahaman Abiola said that the webinar had been put together to end the spread of fake news which were fast becoming endemic across the globe, most particularly in Nigeria.
“We currently battle an influx of unvetted social media blogs that do not adopt ethical standards of sourcing for news, and spread news with malicious intent. This has done more harm than good to the threads of unity in our nation and the continent as a whole, and certainly doesn’t help us in our fight against misinformation.
The youth have a huge role to play in putting an end to this, because they are the main players who can either make or mar depending on how they choose to use the media. This is why what we are doing through the media literacy project at Legit.ng is very important and should be supported by all. We are grateful to LEAP Africa for sharing a vision for a Nigeria devoid of misinformation, with help from the youth.”
LEAP Africa Youth Day of Service (YDOS) and Legit.ng partnership
Co-host and Communication and PR Manager at LEAP Africa, Ellen Ukpi, shared her happiness at the collaboration between Legit.ng and LEAP Africa through the youth volunteering platform for social change, YDOS. She recognised the media as a tool for change and expressed the need for the youth to leverage the platform with great discernment.
“YDOS is a week-long, Pan-African youth-led social impact campaign that is celebrated alongside the UN International Youth Day. The campaign is designed to harness the agency, creativity, and voices of Africa’s Youth for the actualisation of Sustainable Development Goals by equipping them with the resources, skills and tools for personal and community transformation.
As we round off this year’s campaign, we are working with Legit.ng to analyse the media as a tool for change and we want to buttress that the responsible usage of this tool by the youth is very important. The biggest threat to freedom of the media is the misuse of the media. So, if we are not able to properly use media, we are at risk of losing the freedom of using media.”
The webinar properly took its course when keynote speaker and fact-check officer at DUBAWA, Elizabeth Ogunbamowo mounted the virtual stage to give her keynote speech on her assigned topic “Navigating the truth in a digital landscape: Empowering youth through media literacy and fact-checking.”
The researcher and fact-checker at DUBAWA expressed that the youth media literacy conversation couldn’t have come at a better time than during the renowned month for the United Nations (UN) International Youth Day of Service (YDoS).
Elizabeth stated that the average human had the tendency to share information regardless of its authenticity as long as such news was perceived to be beneficial to loved ones. This was one of the contributing factors to the quick spread of information in the society. This information disorder has thrived in our society and has been amplified on the social media which are made up on mostly youth-driven platforms. Elizabeth urged the youth to take fact-checking seriously as this is the best way to navigate truth in a digital landscape.
“It is imperative that African youths subject sources of information to proper scrutiny to ensure that we are not consuming the wrong information. When an otherwise unknown blog pushes out information regarding the whereabouts of a public office holder, it's important to cross check the same on other credible news outlets as in most cases information is not always exclusive to a medium. Beyond this, at DUBAWA, we strongly advise that our researchers use multiple sources of information to carry out the verification process. This is important because we don’t want the youth to become ignorant puppets in the hands of propagandists.”
Elizabeth stressed the need for all to imbibe the Rotaract Club’s four-way test which principles hold: “Is it the truth?”, “Is it fair to all concerned?”, “Will it build goodwill and better friendship?” , and “Will it be beneficial to all concerned?”. By abiding by this principle, she mentioned that we can achieve a good level of media literacy in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
The speaker ended her session by giving practical case studies about information disorder that had penetrated the continent and Nigeria, and how her organisation had used fact-checking tools like ‘Google search engine, InVID, Duplichecker’, and more, to fact-check these news that were meant to offset the peace of the society. She also took participants through the practical usage of these tools to fact-check news.
Award-winning journalist and Legit.ng Copy Editor, James Ojo, who facilitated the webinar workshop, also touched on responsible online behaviours, navigating privacy concerns, counter bullying and online harassment, building positive digital relationships, and digital literacy beyond texts.
Buttressing Elizabeth’s tips for media literacy, James taught participants to distinguish between fake news and authentic news. He also gave practical steps on stopping the spread of fake news, and shared more tech-based fact-checking tools that would help keep misinformation or disinformation in check.
Bringing his session to an end, James said, “The internet is a powerful tool to engineer positive impact. Do better with it and do not destroy lives, but rather improve your world.”
Legit.ng and LEAP Africa’s YDOS Media Literacy partnership which was forged in line with Legit.ng’s ambitious media sustainability strategy of ensuring that one-third of the Nigerian youth population becomes media literate by 2025, aligns with target 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 which aims to ensure the promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.
As a fully-fledged digital media company, Legit.ng continues to maximise the full potential of technology and the positive elements of the digital world, in impacting the lives of people through its large audience and readership base.
You can learn more about media literacy on Legit.ng’s special microsite, dedicated to teaching visitors on how to fact-check rumours, advocate transparency in reporting, and demand responsible news journalism from the media.
About Legit.ng Media Literacy Project
Legit.ng, Nigeria’s leading digital media and news platform and no.1 Facebook publisher in the world kicked off a media literacy campaign dedicated to helping Nigerians easily distinguish between fake and accurate news, in September 2022, in collaboration with top Nigerian celebrities like Aproko Doctor, Tochi Okechukwu, Tega Dominic, Edache Obe, Giddyfia, among others. As a major launch medium, Legit.ng also unveiled a special microsite that was dedicated to teaching visitors on how to fact-check rumours, advocate transparency in reporting, and demand responsible news journalism from the media.
Since inception, the project has gone on to get recognised in Africa and on a global stage for its contribution in preserving trust in journalism.
About YDOS 2023
LEAP Africa’s brainchild, YDoS is a one-month, annual Pan-African, youth-led social impact campaign which coincides with the celebration of the UN International Youth Day in August. It is a platform to harness African youths' energy, creativity, and innovation by encouraging them to volunteer their time, skills, and resources to deliver a sustainable future for Africa.
Since the programme's inception in 2020, the Youth Day of Service has recorded participation in 24 African countries and engaged over 6000 volunteers on about 400 regional SDG Action projects. This year, the Youth Day of Service aims to connect 7,000 volunteers across Africa to local SDG action projects.
About DUBAWA
DUBAWA is a West African independent verification and fact-checking project, initiated by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) and supported by the most influential newsrooms and civic organisations in West Africa to help amplify the culture of truth in public discourse, public policy, and journalistic practice. It has a presence in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia.
Dubawa’s mission statement is to institute a culture of truth and verification in public discourse and journalism through strategic partnerships between the media, government, civil society organisations, technology giants and the public.
Source: Legit.ng
