The Ministry of Information conducted the third media and information literacy course for the officials of Information and Public Relations Department yesterday morning.

The opening ceremony of the course was held at the training school of IPRD headquarters in Nay Pyi Taw. Deputy Minister for Information U Aung Hla Tun officiated at the event, with the remarks on the increasing trend of online and social media platforms in searching information.

He also said the data has shown that there are over 20 million social media users and 60 million mobile sim card users in the country with more than 51 million of population.

The deputy minister also concluded the trend of mainstream media seems to decline as the popularity of social media is increasing. He added that although many people are using social media, all the news stories on these platforms are not trustworthy in the view of common sense as rumours, false news, fake news, fabricated news with bad intention and hate speech have gone viral on social media.

He also remarked the information literacy can scrutinize and analyze sorts of information, their sources and related media groups on their reliability. He finally concluded that all the social media users need to learn media and information literacy, and the trainees were urged to disseminate the knowledge gained from this course which will be conducted from 19 to 24 August for 37 officers of district IPRD offices.—MNA (Translated by Aung Khin)