PESHAWAR: Speakers at a ceremony on Monday urged users of social media to avoid covering unverified news stories and videos for journalism purposes and stressed the need for using it only for positive activities as responsible citizens.

The ceremony titled ‘Digital Citizen Journalism’ was arranged by Individualland Pakistan, a non-government organisation.

It was the final ceremony of a series of training workshops for citizens, youth, representatives of local governments and civil society organisations held in different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including Peshawar, Swabi, Dera Ismail Khan, Nowshera, tribal subdivision of Tank and others.

Citizens, youth and representatives of local government were imparted training about importance of social media, its harmful effects and benefits as well as journalistic ethics and tools as to how to use it for positive activities.

The participants of the workshops had prepared different videos after their trainings and approximately 150 visuals were sent to the NGO to decide the best, while 14 of them were selected by the organisation for awards.

Peshawar-based journalists, including Shamim Shahid, Waseem Ahmad Shah, Yousaf Ali, Saiful Islam Saifi and women MPA Somi Falak Naz, who selected 14 packages, were given awards and cash prizes. Speaking on the occasion, Shamim Shahid claimed that Facebook personal page was going to be banned, which was regrettable because social media was the only source remained to the users to freely express their viewpoints.

However, he appreciated the Individualland for launching such a good project to impart training to common citizens and responsible people to acquaint them with journalistic ethics in order to use social media for positive activities.

Similarly, Waseem Ahmad Shah urged the youth to take care while using social media, particularly for journalism purposes, as majority of social media users did not know about cybercrime. He, therefore, asked the users to study the cybercrime law in order to avoid any unpleasant situation.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2019