India, August 14th, 2018 (Fr. Ivan). Holy Cross School Panisagar had two days classes on Media literacy & Social Communication by Fr. Ivan D’ Silva, svd the Coordinator of Social Communication for Agartala Diocese, Tripura.  Around 240 students of Class VIII to X actively participated in the awareness classes.

The resource person explained about the basic principles of Communication and good communication. He also elaborately explained on Media & Violence, Media & women, Media & films, Media & gender, Media & advertisement and Media & Mobile. It was an eye opening for many of the students about these classes because some of them expressed “we know about these things but we are not aware of the harm they do”.

Another participant said, “I watch so many films but I was not aware of the technique they use to capture our minds, such as colour, light, background music, cuts & shots”. When the resource person asked the participants, how many of them think that, WWE is a sports or competition channel? It was a surprising answer that, many are of the opinion that it is a sports channel and many expressed that, it is non-violent. Diocesan coordinator touched on the topic of ‘Mobile & Fake news’.

Quite many of them spoke that, they forward the articles, photos and videos from the whatsapp without examining whether they are true or false. He stressed on the point that, how students can be critical viewers and users of media and analyse the media before they over rule us.