Nhung Trang: Experience after two Newsavvy workshops

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Reasons why I participated in Newsavvy project

“On a random day in March, I saw the call for application for Newsavvy project from my classmate. After reading the project description on its website, I decided to join immediately.

First of all, Newsavvy aims to raise young people’s awareness of fake news on digital platforms – content that I previously worked on in a project at university.

The second thing is the logo of Step Forward Education, an educational organisation that I had the opportunity to participate in a project before.

And the last reason is because I have too much free time. I will participate in the project that I am interested in and get a certificate.”

My first workshop experience

“The first lesson went smoothly & exciting because I got 4 bonus points for naming 10 ASEAN countries in 20 seconds (if I remembered Thailand, I could get 5 points already).

In this session, we met Mr. Cao Tri – an editor of Thanh Nien newspaper. He shared a lot about the current fake news problem as well as how to identify and recognize the credibility of an article. What impressed me about him is not only his beautiful and inspiring voice, but also the things he shared with us – which most of us never knew before.

The first thing I remember is that if a workshop or an article has the name of an expert with a lot of titles, before trusting that expert, we should check if they shared their expertise or not.

The second is a touching story about the reunion of two soldiers after 20 years. It will be a touching article until the speaker discovers something unusual about their ages. The story made me realise the importance of verifying content before publishing.

I still remember what Mr. Tri said at the beginning of the workshop:

“After the workshop, I want you to be confused because of what I said today”

Mr. Tri Cao

And at the end of the first session, I really felt confused?!”

Now moving on the second workshop

“In the second workshop, we had the opportunity to interact with Mr. Vu Ha – an expert in information technology.

Although Mr. Vu Ha’s way of sharing was not the same as Mr. Cao Tri’s, I really liked how simple his sharing was to us.

He mentioned a lot of terms related to malicious code, the problems that we may encounter when clicking on a random link. The word Ransomware still remains in my head 😅.

Ransomware is a type of virus that encrypts or blocks access to data on the computer disk. To return to normal operation, users must transfer money to the account to remove the virus.

I was impressed when he shared with us some websites that can check the reliability of a website. Honestly, I didn’t expect to have that kind of checking tool.”