YEREVAN, MAY 24, ARMENPRESS. During the global media summit within the framework of the 2018 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Aram Ananyan, Director of ARMENPRESS state news agency, in his remarks attached great importance to the necessity to differentiate fake news, adding that for this purpose the news agencies should strengthen their brand and do everything to increase the reader’s media literacy.

Asked how the private international companies, the states or international organizations should deal with the issue of differentiating the fake news, Aram Ananyan said in such situation it is necessary to pay more attention to the traditional media and not to be afraid of criticism, rather to create a new discourse within the media and the society.

“We are also concerned over the spread of fake information. In the social media world our reader doesn’t differentiate between the brands since when we ask them about any news, they say they have read it on Facebook or Twitter. Nobody looks at the source of the news they open. And my colleagues delivered right remarks regarding our mission: we need to strengthen our brands, we need to do everything possible and impossible to increase the media literacy of our reader because we see now that our reader is becoming more literate. They have already learnt more or less to differentiate, and this is not the situation that existed several years before”, Aram Ananyan said.

The Director of ARMENPRESS added that he doesn’t know to what extent all this will deepen, but he brought Armenia’s example where in the recent period more or less the famous reader, more or less solid people, bloggers, who create certain ways in social networks, have become more literate. “We are concerned over another issue. We are concerned over the fact that during the discussions of key issues the social platforms themselves decide what to present to what kind of reader. And here there is a big problem: the problem is that archipelagos can appear within the society. We see that there is going to be a distribution of ideas in the society. And what is important for me will not be important for you. And it will seem to me that I am surrounded by a society that thinks like me, and you will think the contrary”, Aram Ananyan added.

English –translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan