A fun way of getting a serious message across is what the online game ‘ChoicesIMake’, developed by a Malaysian group on news and information, literacy, aims for. Ready?

This set of infographics describes how Southeast Asians’ digital lives are: how connected they are, how long they are online, theirs views on misinformation, their age profiles, and more.

20 MARCH 2021 | REPORTING ASEAN In English | Burmese | Indonesian Độ “tào lao” của thông tin cho rằng chế độ ăn thực phẩm chứa alkaline cao (giàu kiềm) có thể chống dịch Covid-19 đến nay đã được xác định khẳng định trên khắp thế giới. Tuy nhiên, thông tin sai lệch này cũng […]

Meet the Vietnam Anti-Fake News Center, the newest kid on the fact-checking block in Southeast Asia. It doesn’t work like fact-checkers work elsewhere, but the COVID-19 infodemic has created new spaces for such initiatives within the limits of the media scene.

အယ်လ်ကာလိုင်းပါတဲ့ အစားအစာတွေဟာ ကိုဗစ်-၁၉ ကနေ သင့်ကို ကာကွယ်ပေးပါတယ်ဆိုတဲ့ မဟုတ်မဟတ် ရေးထားတာကို မှတ်မိပါသလား။ အလျင်အမြန် ပျံ့နှံ့သွားခဲ့တဲ့ အဲဒီသတင်းကို အခု ဆောင်းပါးပါ ‘ခြေရာခံလိုက်ထား’ ပုံကိုကြည့်ရင် အချက်အလက်စစ်ဆေးရတဲ့ အလုပ်ဟာ အခက်အခဲတွေများပြားသလောက် တစ်ဖက်ကလည်း ဆက်လက်လုပ်ဆောင်နေရမယ်ဆိုတာ သိနိုင်ပါတယ်။

A year after #COVID19 came to Southeast Asia, the infodemic around it is going strong in Myanmar – and adapting to new issues such as vaccines. Also in Burmese and Vietnamese.

Misinformation and disinformation around COVID-19 continue to thrive, but Malaysians also have more trust in traditional media compared in recent years.

Infodemic. Amid the coronavirus outbreak, online spaces in Southeast Asia have become a petri dish of deafening ‘noise’ and filth on steroids, into which fear-based behaviour sinks comfortably. But in the end, using online spaces involves personal responsibility, and cannot be passed on to Big Tech.

Myanmar has become a case study for how disinformation, fake news and hate speech affect online space and content, and therefore, public perceptions and debates. In this Q & A, The Irrawaddy’s Moe Myint shares his insights about the challenges, some of them very dangerous for professional journalists, thrown up by the toxic online environment marked by misinformation and deep divisions in Myanmar today.

Navigating the news in Southeast Asia requires separating fake news from professionally done media products, discernment and evaluation, highlighting how the media landscape has changed. In this Q & A with Reporting ASEAN’s Johanna Son, Hong Kong University’s Masato Kajimoto talks about the need for news literacy – and media credibility.