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Message from Dr. Diljit Singh

Dr. Diljit Singh
Retired Professor
University of Malaya

Congratulations to the Department of Information Studies and Library Management, East West University
on the occasion of Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2020.

Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week represents an opportunity to review the developments

in the area of media and information literacy, and make plans for the future. It is an opportunity to reach
out various stakeholders to use MIL as a means for development of the community.

This year’s theme for Global MIL Week, Resisting Disinfodemic: Media and Information Literacy for

Everyone and by Everyone, is timely in view of the many challenges we are facing. The most obvious
challenge is the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in more than 1 million deaths
worldwide, affected more than 40 million people, and has had economic, social and health impacts on many

more people.

Addressing this Covid-19 challenge requires information. It is important to provide reliable and accurate
information if we are to contain and fight the disease. The right information to the right people at the right
time can make a difference between life and death. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation during

this crisis – information that may not be accurate, or may not be in the right form, or may be out-dated or,
worse still, may be deliberately falsely created for some reason. It becomes even more dangerous when this
misinformation is spread by word-of-mouth, social media or traditional media without checking its

accuracy. We are facing an epidemic of misinformation – a disinfodemic.

There is a need to resist this disinfoedmic, and to provide the right information to the right people at the
right time. This is where Media and Information Literacy (MIL) can play an important role. MIL has wide
connotations, but the basics of it is the ability to identify, find, evaluate and apply information. It is

important that every member of society be able to identify what information is needed, find it in the best
possible manner, evaluate it, and then to use it appropriately. MIL is one tool that can be used to fight the
Covid-19 pandemic.

Libraries can do much in fighting this disinfodemic. Many libraries conduct media and information literacy

programs for their users. It is now critical to libraries to increase their efforts to conduct even more programs
in various forms and at various times to reach out to as many people as possible There is a need to develop
media and information literacy skills for everyone. People must be able to evaluate and apply the

information to fight this pandemic.

However, libraries by themselves can only do so much; it is the librarians who work in them who can reach
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out to the library users, to friends and family members, and to the population at large to develop their media
and information literacy skills. They can do it through the various communication channels – official media,
social media, formal channels, informal channels, etc. – so that people become more information literate.