COMSATS University Islamabad launched ‘Train the Trainer Program on Media Literacy’ for all students and employees for detecting and countering Fake News

The Faculty Development Academy (FDA) of COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI) launched a massive training program, initially at its Islamabad Campus, to educate all its students and employees to become aware of the typical ways in which fake news is spread on the electronic and social media, both intentionally and unintentionally and the best techniques for preventing and countering it. Later, this program would be expanded and replicated across remaining six CUI campuses. 

The resource person for the training was Mr. Muhammad Shahzad, Executive Director General, Digital Communications Department, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan. Upon arrival, Mr. Shahzad called on the Rector, CUI and gave a bird’s eye view of the session.  

Mr. Ali Tawab Baloch, In-charge FDA welcomed the participants of the training and highlighted the importance of the Train the Trainer Program. The training was attended by twenty faculty and admin officers working in different academic and admin departments of CUI. Subsequently, these trainees would in turn impart training to all students and employees within their respective departments, in batches, in collaboration with FDA.

The trainer emphasised the importance of fact-checking before forwarding any piece of information and provided clues to detecting fake news or propaganda by explaining its contours. He said one especially needed to be sceptical of sensational news. He said that fake news was likely to spread six times faster than actual factual news. He also demonstrated the use of reverse image search to detect doctored photos.

Mr. Shahzad also informed how statistics or data are sometimes manipulated to support a particular agenda. Talking about context manipulation, he emphasised the need to determine if the information is being presented misleadingly or if forces are at work to deliberately omit crucial context to alter its meaning.

The training program has been launched by the Faculty Development Academy (FDA)on the advice of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in compliance with a resolution passed by the National Assembly of Pakistan for taking immediate steps for providing media literacy training in educational institutions for countering fake news on social and electronic media.

The FDA is the training arm of CUI and has been operating since 2004. It has conducted more than 200 training programs and trained more than 10,000persons within CUI as well as other higher educational institutions of Pakistan.