Digital Media Literacy Campaign in Identifying News

Department of Communication, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Diponegoro, Semarang - Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: rouli.manalu@gmail.com

Abstract

This article explains the ways in which a digital media literacy campaign was conducted to help groups of adolescent to identify fake news or hoax and to prevent the further dissemination of fake news. A number of research have shown that young generation, or popularly known as millennials, is the age group of media users that has the highest tendency to read and to spread hoax or fake news. This is also tied to the fact that millennial spend more time on the Internet, and therefore have higher exposure to many various types information, including fake news. Based on the digital media campaign programs that was conducted in several public and private high schools in Semarang, Indonesia, this article will explicate the initial condition regarding the ability of high-school students in recognizing and identifying fake news before the digital media literacy campaign, and then explain how the campaign helping students to improve the ability to do so. This article will further describe the challenges faced in the typical media literacy campaign and several suggestions to overcome those challenges in future digital media literacy programs.