Deep South Cofact : Media Literacy for Peace

 17 ก.ย. 2564 17:37 น. | อ่าน 1582

“Being alone may be good because we may not have any headache and we do not have to know the way of life of other persons. We do not want to pay any attention on or listen to any news of other persons whether they are fake news, true news, or rumors.

In fact, we have a large society. We can answer everything we are asked.

Technology is very fast. We can perceive news rapidly even though we are distant from each other. However, do you know the source of news? If we do not pay attention on such source even we are reading such news, there may be someone damaged by fake news.

Let’s help to screen and check news! Fake news is still available.

Don’t believe easily and don’t forward. Stop rumoring before being damaged.

Think carefully on bad effects of fake news. If we believe news easily, fairness will be destroyed.”

This is the lyric of a song, “Don’t Believe”, explaining context of current communication with more modern communication channels and a huge number of data can cause confusion. In addition, communication also expands to presentation of persons who are not professional news reporters via communication technology making society and local areas have many amateur news reporters. Consequently, information checking or evaluation on reliability of data is more difficult. This is the cause of the problem on Fake News. When fake news is published to society, it may cause disagreement and quarrel among people leading to violence. In addition, the area of three southern border provinces has also encountered with the problem on fake news continuously.

“Cofact” An Open Space for Fake News Checking

Therefore, media literacy and utilization of media for building peace is important. As a result, this online platform, Cofact or Collaborative Fact Checking is considered as a new innovation created under cooperation of many organizations on behalf of Deep South Collaborative Fact Checking with the aim to make everyone becomes fact checker and create a space to search for facts in order to protect Thai people from being preys of all types of “fake news”.

To check fake news via Cofact Platform, if you find any suspicious message, you can check such message or news before believing or forwarding via 2 channels of Cofact platform as follows:

How to check fake news via cofact.org

1. Click https://cofact.org
2. Type message required to be checked in searching box. Click Search.
3. For search directories, click Presented Directories, for example, COVID 2019. If your interested topic is already mentioned by other users via posting and commenting in the system, such topic will be shown.
4. Click See Details, there will be more comments on such message for decision making. In addition, you can notice scale with arrow for making decision (from red to green referring to fake news to fact).

How to Check Fake News via Line @cofact

1. Open Line Application. Search for friend. Type @cofact in LINE ID box. “Cofact” will be shown for adding friend.
2. In Chat Box, there will be a greeting message, you are able to send suspicious message via the system. Cofact will pull information mentioned by other persons in the system for your checking.
3. If there is any similar message with suspicious message, the examples of message will be shown for selecting, you can move the arrow to see your interested message. To see details, click Select.
4. Chat Bot will conclude the ratio of fake and true news from all comments related to such message with some examples of some comments. If you want to read any comment, click Read.
5. If you are unable to search for fake news in the system, it means that this issue is not mentioned by anyone. We would like to invite you to post a new topic via https://cofact.org

Launching Deep South Collaborative Fact Checking on Southern Border Provinces

Deep South Collaborative Fact Checking was officially launched on November 8th, 2020, operated by Digital4Peace and it was also sponsored by Thai Media Fund for supporting civil society activities of juveniles to alert on correct media production for preventing fake news.

Cooperation from several sectors must be built in order to develop safe and creative media for driving media for peace.

The guidelines for taking actions through cooperation of organizations of civil society, community organizations, educational institutions and new generation from universities can be applied by using Cofact Platform for checking data. In addition, off-line media like radio is also focused in order to enable villagers who are not familiar with online communication to call for ask DJs to check suspicious news via Application.

Problems caused by technology can be solved by technology that can help to check facts, reduce misunderstanding, and error communication. People with different thinking should be provided with some opportunities to talk with one another based on facts. Consequently, Social Media and internet becomes the safe and creative zone. Therefore, this project is considered as the beginning making all sectors to check facts because facts can lead to understanding that is the important foundation of peace.