Disclosure: The Foundation For Freedom Online (“State Department Memo: Push ‘Media Literacy’ to Weaken ‘Demand Side’ Of Disinformation“), after a thorough investigation, has revealed a secret plan by the State Department to “educate” students not to read news and analysis that is inconsistent with US policy!!!
” A 2022 memo written for the U.S. State Department recommends introducing “media literacy” and “digital literacy” courses in schools to combat disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech.
The report reveals that keeping children safe online was not the original goal of the U.S. federal government’s push for media literacy and digital literacy programs — the goal was to proactively censor specific types of political speech to prevent “democratic backsliding.”
Media literacy and “vaccination” techniques are being promoted as a demand-side solution to disinformation — government-backed influence campaigns to bias online audiences against unacceptable narratives.
The report’s author previously worked for Ofcom, the internet regulator in the UK, who is currently responsible for implementing the country’s Internet Safety Act.
Although she is considered an impartial expert who advises the Foreign Office, the EU and the Republic of Ireland on digital policy, the author has previously condemned Brexit and the 2016 election as the result of a misinformed electorate driven by “fear”.
Today, advocates of “media literacy” and “digital literacy” in schools often claim that their primary aim is the well-being of children — teaching safe online habits. However, as a 2022 Foreign Office memo retrieved by the Internet Freedom Foundation reveals, the push for media literacy was organised from the top down by the previous federal government, with the main aim of teaching in future generations to avoid sources accused of “misinformation, disinformation, and malicious information.”
In the 2022 Media Literacy Planning Manual, commissioned by the State Department’s Bureau of Europe and Eurasia, officials made clear that media literacy is much more about debunking unacceptable political discourse than protecting children from harm.
The manual warned that “today’s media ecosystems are more complex and sophisticated than at any other time in human history” and that malicious actors use “propaganda, conspiracies, rumors, hoaxes, partisan content, and various types of manipulated media to influence, persuade, and polarize.”
The most common purpose of media literacy interventions, it noted, was to address issues such as “disinformation, online radicalization, or hate speech.”
The problem, the handbook concluded, was an “information disorder, a term that encompasses the phenomena of disinformation and malicious information” that threatened democracy and governance.
Schools, the report noted, are an excellent venue for the dissemination of media literacy thanks to their “ready-made” delivery infrastructure.
The report also noted that educators tend to be trustworthy. At several points in the report, the importance of mobilizing trusted institutions to disseminate official messages about disinformation and media literacy is emphasized. The report also notes the importance of the “captive audience” that classrooms represent.
The report explicitly linked media literacy efforts to shaping political outcomes. It warned that such processes could “lead to real consequences, such as the rollback of democratic norms, contested elections, and violence.”
The EU Boomerang
Censorship laws, such as the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Cybersecurity Act, are rightly viewed by the current administration as a threat to American tech companies and free speech in the US.
However, the federal government under previous administrations has taken the exact opposite approach: because it too viewed free speech in the US as a threat, American soft power foreign policy instruments have worked tirelessly to encourage rather than combat foreign censorship initiatives. As the Internet Freedom Foundation previously revealed, 23 of the 42 organizations responsible for enforcing the EU’s censorship regime through online speech monitoring (i.e., more than half) were funded by the US federal government. Until the current administration, American taxpayer money also fueled the censorship machine in Brazil, which went further in punishing American companies for “disinformation.”
The Media Literacy Manual is further evidence of this transatlantic censorship cooperation. It was written for the State Department’s Bureau of Europe and Eurasia—the document was thus intended to guide American diplomacy in Europe at a time when the EU’s censorship regime was in its early stages of development.”
Did the U.S.S.R. finally fall, or did it move West?
Source: Foundation For Freedom Online
