by Harold Clavite
In September, I spoke at the 2018 National Literacy Awards for local government units, organized by DepEd’s Literacy Coordinating Council in Baguio City.
The topic is very familiar to me from decades of working with communities and to my agency as the government’s primary development communication arm. Literacy is an important matter in a developing country; a key indicator of the level of progress our country has attained in a fast-changing world. Thus, this has always been an advocacy for us government communicators and seeing local governments and the education sector continuously investing in it raises my hopes for the next generations who will lead the country.
Based on the Education for All Global Monitoring Report of UNESCO in 2006, being “literate” is defined as being able to read and write text. Adding the ability to understand a simple message in any language or dialect, the concept of “basic literacy” comes in. If a person has these abilities with the further addition of numeracy skills, then one has attained a significantly higher level of literacy called “functional literacy.”
In the case of the Philippines, we definitely have shown great progress. Per Literacy Statistics, Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS) of 2013, 96.5 percent of Filipinos were literate, an improvement from 95.6 percent in 2008. Almost all Filipinos ten years old and above were basically literate, while nine out of ten Filipinos 10 to 64 years of age were functionally literate. At least in terms of reading, writing and comprehending, Filipinos have come a long way. But as we may all know, we are in an era of rapid change. The age of Web 2.0 continues to thrive and Filipinos have embraced it wholeheartedly. We know that we have been once called the social media capital of the world, with every study on the matter ranking the Philippines as among the top countries spending the most hours on social media platforms.
As these advancements widen their reach on our soil, the dangers they entail also spread like wildfire, and their worst target is the youth. According to the DQ Institute, an average Filipino child now spends 34 hours in front of digital screens every week, two hours higher than the global average of 32 hours. While this happens, 73 percent of our children are exposed to cyber-bullying, inappropriate active searches, gaming addiction, meeting strangers online, online sexual content, inappropriate adult images and inappropriate sexual talking. Filipino children have become increasingly vulnerable online and such problem requires us to know more about what we’re dealing with. There is a need to spread a new kind of literacy.
Coincidentally, the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) has been tapped by the Government of Japan through the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF) this year to develop and implement a media and information literacy (MIL) campaign that is focused on cyberwellness for the youth. After a successful forum on cyberwellness in March this year, which was organized by PIA and attended by delegates from the ten ASEAN member states, we now work closely with the University of the Philippines – College of Mass Communications Foundation Inc. for the MIL campaign plan that includes communication research and development of web and multimedia assets that will be shared and implemented in the Philippines and the rest of ASEAN region. Currently, focus group discussions with the youth are being done by UP-CMCFI and PIA in select provinces in Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao and Metro Manila. Completion of these modules and multimedia assets will be completed before the end of the year and full implementation will commence by January and February 2019. These efforts are fully supported by JAIF and the InfoComm Development Authority of Singapore, another strong ally and partner of the Philipines in the MIL campaign.
Further, the ASEAN Ministers Responsible for Information (AMRI) had adopted a framework to combat one other threat to communication online— the proliferation of disinformation and wrong information. When a whole region in Asia commits to fight this problem, they certainly believe it to be no piece of cake. Disinformation, misinformation, and wrong information, or collectively known by many as ‘fake news,’ have plagued the region in recent times, threatening leaders and communities, dividing countries. Unfortunately, this plague had reached our own communities, creating chilling impact to people’s online behavior. They had caused several confusion and conflict about societal issues and promoted divisiveness from among us. Many of us leverage on popularity and aggressiveness to make it to the day’s hot and trending topics notwithstanding its ill-effects to families and communities.
Since I took the helm in PIA in 2016, we have been pushing for public information advocacies that aim to drive away people responsible for spreading disinformation. We embedded in our work plans these advocacies to be able to reach out to more people in the communities and encourage them to become responsible sharers of information. Our organization have strengthened targets and priorities that is fully aligned with the President’s priority agenda. In 2017, we developed a five-year strategic roadmap (2018-2022) that aims to redefine public information efforts of Government.
Advocating for a responsible citizenry in public information, our agency takes advantage of various channels to encourage people to dismiss disinformation. Our mother agency, the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) has rallied its offices and attached agencies to support and organize activities and projects that will reach out to more people in pushing for these advocacies. The use of government information networks and broadcast mechanisms are crucial in putting across such message. On the ground, PIA engages with public officials, community leaders, digital users, and ordinary townsfolk to discuss these issues. Our multi-sectoral forums, barangay forums, consultations, and community-based discussions have created key means to facilitate more inclusive and more engaging public information efforts.
In the same manner, we educate people on basic digital platform use and management including basic security and privacy settings and warn the public against “trolls” or fake accounts on social media, which are designed to mislead users and readers; we help them detect fabricated news spread even by the so-called influencers, and ward off hateful language that prevents us from achieving unity under this Presidency.
We have established good working relations with Facebook especially now that their Philippines office is up and running. For several years now, Facebook has shown support to Government and since I joined PIA, we established cooperation and consistent engagement with them. In March this year, they sent resource persons from Singapore to our Media and Information Literacy Forum and talked about basic security on the digital platform. Facebook also supports PIA’s continued quest to educate and empower communities through information. While fake accounts proliferate in their platforms, Facebook continues to work a lot harder to purge these tools that are currently being used like a deadly weapon by malicious entities. During the crisis in Marawi in 2017, Facebook took down more than 400 fake accounts that were created to promote violent extremism, mislead the public, and create public confusion. To date, Facebook had taken down more than 500 million fake accounts globally.
However, all these efforts would be for naught if the people do not make progress within their own homes and virtual worlds. Responsible sharing of information does not begin and end at the government’s convenience; it starts with each Filipino logging onto Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms every single day.
Verifying what we share and reading carefully before we comment will be easy for everyone if we all keep in mind that our Facebook accounts are not different personas—they reflect who we are, online and offline. If people catch us spreading nonsense and recklessly defamatory remarks online, it will make a mark on our personal interactions with friends and family, and may even affect how future employers see us when they check our online accounts.
Disinformation destroys, but truth empowers. What we share don’t just stay on our timelines; they inform opinions, influence actions and affect sentiments of the people who see our posts.
We, at PIA, will continue to commit our time and effort in creating safe spaces for the youth on social media, but every Filipino must do their part in making this happen. Let us refrain from using our social media accounts as tools for spreading hatred and lies with impunity. Instead, we use social media to build and strengthen connections that will further our goals in nation-building, and will inspire each of us to band together in the face of adversity and in the spirit of progress.
