Twitter is teaming up with UNESCO to promote Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2018, which began Wednesday and runs until Oct. 31.
The social network created a hashtag-triggered emoji for the week, for #ThinkBeforeSharing, which director of public policy, Europe Karen White described in a blog post as a global call to action to encourage people to think before sharing content online.
Twitter and UNESCO also teamed up on Teaching and Learning With Twitter, a co-branded educational resource to help educators incorporate Twitter into their learning plans, along with guidance on best practices for media and information literacy.
Ads for Good grants were distributed to 10 nongovernmental organizations in UNESCO’s media and literacy network to help raise awareness of their work.
The social network is also participating in the feature conference of Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2018, at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, along with speakers from the Council of Europe, the European Commission, Harvard University, the London School of Economics, the Communications University of China (https://dev.adweek.com/digital/cant-we-just-say-something-nice-about-china/), the Centre for Media and Information Literacy in Kenya and the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology.
In the U.S., Twitter and the National Association for Media Literacy Education are supporting Media Literacy Week using the #MediaLitWk hashtag, and the event is scheduled for Nov. 5 through 9.
White wrote, “Important elections coming up in 2019 for the European Union, Africa and India mean that now more than ever, citizens are turning to platforms like Twitter for information and context to inform their decision. It’s for this reason we are investing more heavily in resources and tools to help surface more credible content with behavior-based signals and tackle problematic content like spam and automation. Our continued and committed focus to media literacy will help supplement these efforts.”
