KUALA TERENGGANU: Early education on digital literacy that emphasises conduct and ethics in the use of social media should be introduced starting at the school level to produce responsible social media users.
Rani Ann, also involved in the production of the new version of the Malaysian Code of Ethics for Journalists which was launched by the Communications Ministry on Feb 20 this year, also suggested that the government implement an education programme for influencers or citizen journalists, to ensure the content they produced are ethical and help their followers become smart social media users.
She said institutional citizen journalists were those working under a company and were free to write, but the news or articles would go through the editors before they were published. She cited a case of a man who was fined RM23,000 by the Taiping Sessions Court in Perak for uploading an offensive comment regarding the Navy helicopter crash in Lumut which killed 10 members last month.