HKyIGF 2020

Hong Kong Youth Internet Governance Forum 2020

Cheers to another successful HKYIGF!

On 11 October 2020, our NetMission Ambassadors hosted our first virtual Hong Kong Youth Internet Governance Forum (HKyIGF) online.

In the midst of a global pandemic, COVID-19 is not the only thing that is spreading expeditiously. According to the United Nations, the world is also seeing another epidemic of misinformation. As a result, we set Misinformation and Disinformation Under The Uncertain Times as the theme of HKyIGF to engage with youth awareness through the introduction of this urgent issue under the multistakeholder framework of internet governance.

This year, we brought together stakeholders from various backgrounds to our 3-hour event, to discuss and examine the complications of misinformation, and how should Hong Kong respond to such developments in policy and regulation as a modern metropolis.

HKyIGF 2020 is mainly divided into 3 parts, (1) Capacity Building, (2) Panel Discussion, (3) Future Engagement in Internet Governance. The forum would not have been complete successfully without the participation of our guests, who also shared their expert knowledge in a series of short presentations.

In the Capacity Building Session, George Chen, Head of Public Policy of Facebook, illustrated how to eliminate misinformation and disinformation from Facebook, and shared the diversified policy from Facebook on handling hate speech, bullying or harassment. Chen also emphasized the importance of creating a better-informed society by 3 main actions: Remove and reduce information, or disinformation and inform problematic posts.

Ho Wa Wong, Candidate of the 2020 Legislative Council election (IT Functional Constituency), has shared the ways of the civic party to confront misinformation or disinformation, and demonstrated various examples from fact-checking resources in Asia, and revealed examples related to the present pandemic situation. Prof. Donna Chu, Associate professor of the School of Journalism and Communication at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, shared her studies on how youth cope with fake news nowadays and how we should enhance youth confidence to facilitate the promotion of more coping behaviors.

During the panel discussion, panellists expressed their viewpoints over the limitation of the current fact-checking system and discussed the ways to improve the system and alternative solutions in addressing misinformation and disinformation online. 

The recording and learning materials of HKyIGF 2020 is now available on our website, you may click the links below for more.

Event recording & meeting chats:
http://nma.asia/hkyigf-2020-recordings
PowerPoint slides & training materials:
http://nma.asia/hkyigf-2020-materials
Hong Kong Youth IGF 2020 Report:
http://nma.asia/hkyigf2020-final-report (updated on 29 December 2020)

NetMission Ambassador 

NET (Networking Opportunity, Empowering Youth, Talent Development) is a model to achieve the mission of youth empowerment in internet governance, ambassadors who have received year-round training and gained oversee conference experience will form a working group to work on community projects like HKYIGF, yIGF, APIGA. We hope these kinds of community works can raise public awareness of what is internet governance.

If you are interested in youth engagement in Internet Governance, please kindly visit our training materials.

For more event photos and videos, please visit NetMission Facebook page and NetMission Instagram profile.