11:38 PM
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Books – Youssef Afifi:
The Faculty of Mass Communication at Cairo University announced the end of the activities of the eighth training course organized by the faculty in cooperation with the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation, entitled “Fake News and Media Misinformation” under the auspices of Dr. Mohamed Othman Elkhosht, President of the University and the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hanan Junaid, Dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication.
The activities of the third day of the course included discussion lectures by Dr. Heba Al-Samry and Dr. Nermin Al-Azraq, Director of the English Section Program, under the title “Digital Culture in the Face of Fake News”, and dealt with ways to deal with media content published through social media platforms (social networking sites), explaining what It is related to the concept of fake news and its types, stressing that this news aims at the deliberate spread of misinformation through traditional and digital media, especially social media.
Dr. Nermin Al-Azraq’s lecture drew attention to the danger of sensational headlines, manipulation of content and fabricated contents, impersonation of real sources, false linking, and mockery of media disinformation methods, as well as fake news, misleading news, and biased news, explaining that there are factors that help spread fake news, including the attractiveness of information and fake news, and the development of tools for falsifying news. And the use of artificial intelligence applications and the difficulty in often verifying the credibility of information.
Dr. Heba Al-Samri, a professor at the Department of Radio and Television at the College of Mass Communication, added that the law alone is not sufficient in confrontation, stressing the importance of awareness and the need to make more efforts to educate citizens and train journalists and media professionals on standards, methods and methods of verifying information and its sources, ensuring its authenticity, and verifying website information and photos.
The activities of the training program also included a lecture on mechanisms for confronting false news, including doubt and dismantling the structure of misinformation, where the attendees of the media students touched on how critical thinking is the first way to reveal the structure of media disinformation, explaining that emotion limits the critical mentality and makes it biased towards some opinions and trends, adding that the contents Political, entertainment, and service content are the most misleading types, while sports and economic content are the least, and that the year 2020 witnessed a major development in this imbalance after the spread of the new Corona virus, as fabricated news spread and began to appear on the surface strongly.
The conclusion of the training course included a lecture on methods of confronting information warfare and the role of the media in confronting such types of information wars, in which examples of applications of information misinformation methods and how to deal with misleading content, especially those related to political affairs, were presented.
The attendees discussed methods for confronting media and information misinformation in the context of events related to the foreign policies of countries, and introducing methods for confronting misinformation and mechanisms for mobilizing global public opinion in the face of the global misinformation war.
At the end of the course, the participating journalists were honored and certificates distributed by Prof. Dr. Hanan Junaid, Dean of the Faculty, and Hani Abdel Malak, Director of the Egypt Office at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.
During her speech at the conclusion of the activities of the eighth session, Dr. Hanan Junaid expressed her happiness with the interaction that took place between the trainers and trainees, stressing the college’s interest in raising the awareness and culture of media professionals within the framework of its agenda for participation and the societal responsibility that it places upon it through its enlightened endeavor to hold protocols and continuous partnerships with public and private institutions to serve The media and the formation of a generation of media professionals who are aware of the concepts of media education and are able to apply the standards of combating false news and media disinformation and are aware of the danger of its spread to national security.
The eighth session was held over three days, and many journalists and academics participated in its activities.
