New educational campaign against rise in misinformation during Covid-19

Shout Out UK’s learning portal, popular with school teachers as a means of teaching pupils how democracy and the media works, was previously only accessible via a paid membership. However, media literacy materials are now accessible to anyone who registers for a free account. Shout Out UK made the decision to make the media literacy materials available to the public to increase awareness about the dangers of misinformation and how to spot it.

The media literacy campaign also includes the launch of a new podcast series, Media Minded, interviewing journalists from around the world about responsible journalism and visual content raising awareness about the dangers of spreading false information and how the public can perform fact checks. 

The Media Minded podcast series is a collaboration between Shout Out UK, the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT) and the US Embassy. It consists of ten episodes – with each episode interviewing a different journalist from around the world – about media literacy and responsible journalism to give listeners a better understanding of how the media works and why fact checking information is crucial. The series will be available on Spotify and iTunes from 18th May. The first episode interviewing Darryl Morris from Talk Radio is live on the Shout Out UK website now.

Shout Out UK has also collaborated with ACT and the US Embassy to release a series of informational graphics defining what misinformation is with real life examples. They will also be releasing two new animations titled ‘Media Literacy and How to Fact Check’ and ‘Information Neighbourhoods’ on 20th May and 3rd June respectively. 

Matteo Bergamini, Shout Out UK CEO and founder, says:

“We have launched the new media literacy resources to communicate the dangers of spreading false information. Misinformation is a real threat to society; the 5G conspiracy led to the burning of masts all over the world, causing disruption to hospitals and putting patients at risk during a global health pandemic. Such conspiracies spread because information is shared faster than ever before, it is very easy to fall for misinformation as it is often designed to spread panic. We are educating people of all ages how to think critically and encouraging them to spare a minute to perform simple fact and source checks before sharing information that could be harmful to themselves and others.” 

Shout Out UK is widely used by teachers to educate pupils on how our democracy and the media work. The free resources include an interactive course about separating fact from fiction and information about Brexit and healthcare in the UK.