Groups to educate young voters on misinformation and fake news online

Apathy is Boring, a non-profit group that gets young people involved in politics, is joining forces with 400 other organizations to launch a media literacy campaign that will help young voters weed out misinformation online.

CTV News reported that one of the methods the group will use includes teaching young adolescents to “turn off the auto-play feature on YouTube,” or “use reverse-image search on Google.”

Samantha Reusch, the research manager at Apathy is Boring, said the group hopes to get voters that are young to “think critically about what they’re seeing online and why it might be spreading.”

“If they see a story that makes them feel very strongly, there might be someone who wants to elicit that response in us,” she told CTV News. “Step back and check the source.”

More recently, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Canada’s cyber defence agency, the Communications Security Establishment both confirmed that foreign actors were trying to influence the upcoming federal election.

The federal government has set up a team to monitor activity and will alert the public if it is needed.

The concern of social media influencing voters stems from concerns that foreign actors tried to use social media to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

As for the group, they intend to use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to publish materials that will teach young adults about misinformation and how to look out for it. They also intend to go to concerts and festivals to talk to young people about how they take in news and understand it.

Source: CTV News

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