To empower first-time voters ahead of the general election Shout Out UK, Ofcom and the Electoral Commission are collaborating on the Dismiss campaign to equip young people with the skills they need to dismiss disinformation. The campaign tackles topics like disinformation, echo chambers and deepfakes right where young people are likely to experience those challenges: on their social media feed.
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The aim of the ‘Dismiss’ campaign is to give people the skills to navigate the information they might see online ahead of the election, so they can make informed decisions about how they vote. It will help to increase their awareness of existing and emerging misinformation / disinformation tactics, as well as improving their ability to combat them.
The campaign highlights six main areas that voters should be aware of:
- Disinformation / misinformation
- Harmful deep fake images, audio and video
- Bot accounts
- Echo chambers
- Data manipulation
The campaign highlights types of content that people might encounter online which fall into these categories. It sets out how this content can be harmful, and explains how people can identify and avoid falling victim to them.
You can take a look at the campaign on X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Shout Out UK is a social enterprise whose aim is to help make sure people understand how governments function through political literacy, and works to protect them from disinformation and misinformation through media literacy. It has previously delivered digital awareness campaigns targeting marginalised and under-represented communities, including young people.
Ofcom has an existing duty to promote media literacy, and also has new duties in this area under the Online Safety Act, which relate to ‘content of democratic importance’ and misinformation / disinformation.
DISCLAIMER: The articles on our website are not endorsed by, or the opinions of Shout Out UK (SOUK), but exclusively the views of the author.
