Community Radio as a Solution to the Rapidly Growing Menace of Fake News
While deliberately produced disinformation are not new to the media or its consumers, the onslaughts of fake news have gathered alarming magnitude and influence in recent times. In the last ten years, the Asia-Pacific region has seen rapid expansion of smartphone usage, enabled by proliferation of peer-to-peer messaging applications and low data tariffs. Unfortunately, these developments have also enabled fake news and disinformation to thrive. The capacity of disinformation to harm individuals and communities has rarely been as visible as during the current pandemic of COVID-19.
Fake news is able to thrive because in most countries of the region, there is a weak or biased public broadcaster, a politicized or corporate mainstream media that is incapable of addressing disinformation at a structural level.
Rather than censorship or surveillance of such applications and content, it is preferable to address disinformation in terms of the media ecosystem that produces disinformation. Community broadcasting has for decades been the only mechanism that explicitly commits itself to being the voice of the ordinary working people, the oppressed, the disenfranchised and the minorities.
In the age of social media and digital networks that seem to be hijacked by vested interests, it is community broadcasting that can combat disinformation at the grassroots level. If community broadcasters can make fighting disinformation a part and parcel of their daily operations on a sustainable basis, then these broadcasters will be an important sector that concretely advocates for community cohesion and upholding accuracy in the production of information.
While there are many types of disinformation being circulated, AMARC Asia-Pacific aims to address those that have the most devastating consequences for the already vulnerable communities. It has initiated collaborative actions with community radios to research and curate appropriate and relevant information needed to fight against the impacts of the pandemic at the local levels.
AMARC-AP is working with member radio stations at providing basic orientation on research and production skills that are geared specifically to countering disinformation on an ongoing basis. The initiative will be complemented with a soon-to-be launched radio campaign that aims to combat disinformation. This will be done through a wide set of strategies – ranging from journalistic fact-checking to distribution strategies that go beyond radio. Post-intervention research where broadcasters will do qualitative and quantitative research to investigate the efficacy of community broadcasting in their role of combating disinformation is the next vital part of this program.
While there are many types of disinformation being circulated, AMARC Asia-Pacific aims to address those that have the most devastating consequences for the already vulnerable communities. It has initiated collaborative actions with community radios to research and curate appropriate and relevant information needed to fight against the impacts of the pandemic at the local levels.
AMARC-AP is working with member radio stations at providing basic orientation on research and production skills that are geared specifically to countering disinformation on an ongoing basis. The initiative will be complemented with a soon-to-be launched radio campaign that aims to combat disinformation. This will be done through a wide set of strategies – ranging from journalistic fact-checking to distribution strategies that go beyond radio. Post-intervention research where broadcasters will do qualitative and quantitative research to investigate the efficacy of community broadcasting in their role of combating disinformation is the next vital part of this program.