The Journalism Program of the University of Santo Tomas (UST) is set to offer a new elective meant to help address disinformation across disciplines.

The new general education elective will be titled “Digital Literacy, Fact-Checking, and Verification” and will be offered to journalism and non-journalism freshies in Term 1 of Academic Year 2024-2025, said Asst. Prof. Felipe F. Salvosa II, coordinator of the UST B.A. Journalism Program.

Salvosa said the elective had been in the works for over a year, with faculty undergoing training on verification tools; monitoring, analysis, and reporting of foreign influence operations; artificial intelligence-based tools; and data visualization.

“This is also in response to the message of Pope Francis for the 58th World Day of Social Communication on May 12, 2024, on the need to ‘reflect carefully on the theoretical development and the practical use of these new instruments of communication and knowledge,’” he said.

Based on the proposed course description, the elective “will adopt theoretical and contextual approaches to navigating the prevailing information disorder and, at the same time, equip students with practical tools to conduct online verification and fact-checking.”

Students are expected to analyze how the information disorder is affecting various disciplines and the democratic system; apply principles of digital literacy and safety; validate information found online for accuracy, reliability, and other relevant criteria; and create original content to disseminate validated or fact-checked information.

The course will be offered initially to journalism and legal management freshmen next term. Expansion in succeeding terms will be based on demand, Salvosa said.

Founded in 1929, UST’s Journalism Program is certified by the ASEAN University Network Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) and has been declared a Center of Development in Journalism twice by the Commission on Higher Education.