Social media and the Internet have grown in the millions with users around the world continuously using it to talk to friends, family, to get their news, as well as just share to the general public their thoughts on certain topics.
Social media and the Internet in general can be used to spread food recipes, cute videos of animals, funny videos of people. It can help communities, as well as create them. All over the world, people can talk to one another about things they have in common. Music, films, books, and so much more can be discussed and learned about from a simple Google search. And not just for entertainment, but also for learning about the sciences, history, and politics. Information at the tips of your fingers, about anything you wish to learn about.
But unfortunately, there are downsides to this. The Internet can be a place of many truths, but also contains many lies that people choose to spread. In the landscape of Ethiopia, there has been an increasing amount of people using Facebook and Twitter to understand the ongoing political struggle the country is facing. As the use of social media goes up, so does the spread of mis/disinformation and hate speech. People who want to stir trouble, or just want to label their opinions as fact, share these articles and posts, causing real life consequences to take place.
USAID seeing this problem decided that something needs to be done. Partnering up with us at Prologue, we created an event where we tried to tackle the issue of media literacy and information verification skills. USAID wanted it to be something not only informative, but entertaining as well, so that those who attended would walk away from this event wanting to put an effort to stop mis/disinformation and hate speech.
Over the course of 2 days, with performances, panel discussions, brainstorming sessions, and interactive moments, Prologue put together an event to remember. We had invited 500 people, of which were influencers, media professionals, social media youth influencers, activists, artists, poets, and more to this event. As these people have their own audiences, they will be able to share the information that they learned at the festival.
Designing this media amplification plan was something that we knew was important. In order for the population to gain digital literacy, we knew we had to find a way to spread it to the masses efficiently. Using those who attended to spread it to their respective audiences, we know that this will help a lot of people begin to learn media information literacy.
As always, Prologue is dedicated to bringing new and exciting events, and we were more than happy help USAID with this. Not only does this festival help bring light to issues that we need to discuss, but it was also done in a fun and unique way.