Prague, Sept 20 (CTK) – Many Czech students trust all kinds of disinformation that they read on social networking sites and their schools do not teach them media literacy, daily Pravo writes on Tuesday.
Thanks to the uncontrollable social networking sites, various rumours spread in an extremely fast way.
Forty-four percent of young people aged 15-25 were ready to believe the untrue assertion that Romanies can claim higher welfare benefits that the majority population, while one third did not believe it and the rest said they do not know, the paper writes, citing a survey carried out by the HateFree Culture project.
Pravo writes that 27 percent of the young people even believed that Romanies get medicines for free or paid a lower price for them.
Some pieces of disinformation have been published for many years, for example the rumour that the HIV virus was created in American laboratories. This claim still appears on the Internet, although after the opening of the archives of the Soviet KGB secret service it turned out that Soviet agents made this claim up and smuggled it to the Indian newspaper Patriot, from which it spread all over the world, Pravo writes.
Michal Kaderka, who teaches media literacy at a Prague secondary school, said the concept of media literacy was developed 10 to 15 years ago in the country, but now it badly needed an update because it originally focused on the press, but children do not read newspapers anymore and neither do their parents.
Czech schools are not ready to react to the world of social networking sites, Kaderka told the paper.
Teachers do not teach the students how to behave on the Internet and understand it, he said.
Kaderka said Czech conspiracy websites seem trustworthy at first sight.
Pravo writes both teachers and students can seek help at servers like hoax.cz or manipulatori.cz that deal with disinformation.
Kaderka said students should learn how to educate themselves throughout their lives and how to responsibly make Twitter and Facebook accounts, they should know the basic rules of Internet security, how to face hateful discussions or avoid cyberbullying.
