How sponsored content is contributing to Australia's media literacy problem
Welcome to a Tuesday update from Unmade. Today: A new report out this morning suggesting that the vast majority of Australians lack the skills to verify facts online, but publishers are making it worse, thanks to misleadingly labelled sponsored content. And further down, a strong day on the Unmade Index.
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Can publishers complain about misinformation if they’re contributing to it?
We may not be close to tackling the rise of misinformation, but we’ve certainly entered a golden period of worrying about it.
This year the Australian government created the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill aimed at preventing the digital platforms from spreading misinformation, before failing to get the support and deciding not to proceed nine days ago.
Last week, ABC chair Kim Williams made the problem the central premise of his speech, while offering up better funding of his organisation as part of the solution.
And today comes new research from four Australian universities - the University of Canberra, Western Sydney University, QUT and RMIT University.
Their findings from the five authors are alarming (but maybe not that surprising).