Vietnam News Agency’s anti-fake news project wins international prize

Photo: VNA

The prize will be officially announced at WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media Asia 2020 event on October 15. A project from Singapore Press Holdings also won a prize.

The VNA project consists of three parts: an anti-fake news song in 15 languages; a TikTok account called Factcheckvn targeting young people; and the “Say No to Fake News” training programme.

The song, “No Fake News”, performed by local rappers DaLab, was released on March 27 and immediately caught widespread attention. A version with English subtitles was released the following day, followed by 13 other versions in French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Thai, Indonesian, Lao, and Khmer.

Posted on all VNA online platforms, the song was promoted on major TV channels as well as in newspapers. It has reached millions of people and has more than 377,000 views on DaLab’s YouTube channel.

All the 15 versions are available on RapNewsPlus at https://bit.ly/39ZHmAa.

The song also marked the debut of VNA’s official TikTok account, Fackcheckvn, in April (https://www.tiktok.com/@fackcheckvn), targeting Generation Z. Videos published by the account have attracted hundreds of thousands of views, with one posting 1.4 million views.

The “Say No to Fake News” programme, meanwhile, has been carried out by VNA youth union and teaches primary, secondary, and high school students how to recognise false news reports on social media and how to respond to such reports. Large numbers of students from schools nationwide have registered to participate.

First organised for 100 secondary students in the central city of Da Nang last December, the programme has now reached schools in HCM City, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Can Tho, and Dong Thap.

The Asian Digital Media Awards 2020 recognised regional publishers who delivered unique and original digital media projects from new approaches to digital subscriptions to impactful local advertising campaigns in the last 12 months./.

VNA