Learning Responsible Media Consumption In HIMSCON 2025: “From Clickbait to Credibility: Straightening Media Literacy in The Digital Age”!

Have you realized that today, almost every part of our world is digitalized? This digitalization affects many aspects of our lives, from transportation, communication, to even transaction, they all have now been touched by technological advancements. Undoubtedly, technology also has become something that we must be educated and knowledgeable about as twenty-first century students.

However, as a literature student, you may ask, “how are technology and digitalization relevant to our literature?”. That, my friends, is what this year’s HIMSCON aimed to answer! With our theme: “From Clickbait to Credibility: Straightening Media Literacy in The Digital Age”, we would like you take you on a journey to explore how literacy evolves and interacts with digital media, through mediums such as movies, books, news, documentaries and their various adaptations.

Our theme for the first day of the event was “Adaptation Across Media: Speculative Fiction and The Human Condition”. Participants were provided with a thrilling take on how fictional works can reflect our societies as well as teach us about humanities, brought to you by a video by our amazing first speaker, Miss Raisa Shafira Affandi.

In the video, Miss Raisa explained the importance of speculative fiction and how it is presented and adapted through various medias. In particular, Miss Raisa displayed examples of how books change when they are adapted into movies, from minor things such as a better visualization, to more drastic differences such as a shift in tone and message. She detailed that movies often conform to Hollywood standards and expectations, which can muddle the morals and symbolism the author is trying to convey. By the end of the video, we could understand how fiction can mirror and even shape reality, as well as how to consume stories properly so that they do not lose their original meaning, and that knowledge was put to the test with a quiz.

For our second day, we explored the main theme of our event, which is “From Clickbait to Credibility: Straightening Media Literacy in The Digital Age”. Miss Anandira delivered an exhilarating lecture about how we can filter and consume information in efficient and responsible ways. Our exceptional speaker goes into meticulous details regarding cultural biases, conflicts of interests, and social issues that can affect the transparency of media we see in our everyday lives.

During the presentation, Miss Anandira also gave us bite-sized facts surrounding the world’s current relevant issues, from general topics such as political conditions and economic patterns to darker themes such as genocide, tragedies, and conflicts. She then dived deeper into the discussion by explaining how all those factors can shape the media we consume, and subsequently how we perceive the world around us. The second day of our event was then closed with a QnA session and a symbolic handover of the speaker certificate, from the committee head to our speaker representative.