Contents
Participating

Participating
in the
digital world

Encouraging
people to
get involved

The world’s knowledge is now at our fingertips. The net offers an inconceivable wealth of information flooding in on us in real time: breaking news, thrilling stories, and groundbreaking studies. It gives us insight into foreign cultures, new perspectives, different opinions. It lets us get involved, look for like-minded people, find supporters or organize protests. And it helps us find our way around new places - whether we’re on vacation or want to move to a new country. In the digital age, access to the Internet is one of the most important prerequisites for social participation – and using digital media competently is becoming as important as knowing your times tables. That’s because the net also confronts us with other things: fake messages, propaganda, insults. There’s no real filter - so facts appear next to fake news, and war reports play alongside cat videos. In a digital world full of fascinating possibilities, we need guidelines to help us recognize what is important and what is right – as individuals, but also as a society.

Leaving no-one behind

  • Being part of the knowledge and inform­ation society is only an option for those with technical access to the net. Deutsche Telekom is therefore investing heavily in network expansion – more than any of its competitors. Data privacy and data security are also high on our agenda as we want our customers to have complete control over their digital data. It is also important to know how to avoid being misled. In order to browse the net safely, we must be able to differentiate between
  • half-truths, alternative facts and fake messages, and question sources critically. We want to strengthen these skills and encourage people to use media responsibly. Through a range of initiatives, we are committed to promoting media literacy among the young and old - hence, this is one of the focal points of our social commitment. We also strive to enable people from different cultural backgrounds to participate in the digital world and integrate them into society.

Clever and smart

  • Anyone who wants to benefit from the advantages of digitalization must also be aware of the risks, so they can use digital media competently, independently, and safely. This applies particularly to children and teenagers: even if “digital natives” seem perfectly able to navigate the information flood, they rarely question the interests or intentions behind it – and they are particularly impressionable. Our “Teachtoday” initiative supports children, young people, parents, grand­parents, and teachers by offering hands-on tips about safe and competent media usage – in seven different languages. Teachtoday provides a huge range of materials, from advice apps to a data privacy dossier and a media literacy test. In 2017, the question “Do the media influence opinion?” was the focus of Teach­today’s “Media, sure! But secure.” competition targeting schools and youth clubs. The Deutsche Telekom Stiftung foundation is also active in promoting media literacy. Through the “Yes, I can!” initiative, it gives young people the skills they need to negotiate the digital world independently and confidently. Digital education is also a top priority within the national companies: the “Connected Kids” project run by T-Mobile Austria helps students and schools to use digital media and learning formats. Our diverse media literacy commitment is consistent with one of the Sustainable Development Goals from the UN’s 2030 Agenda, i.e. to improve access to quality education (SDG 4).

Starting in the world of work

  • Suddenly everything has changed ... People who have had to flee their home­land face huge chal­lenges. Once the most urgent issues have been addressed, and they have started to learn German, comes an important question: how do I find work, and fast? Through a range of programs and projects, we are giving refugees the chance of a flying start. We employed 340 refugees altogether in Germany in 2017 – in internships, training positions, on coopera­tive study programs and under the “Internship PLUS Direct Entry” pilot initiative. The project enables gradual entry into pro­fes­sional life over two and a half years, and leaves plenty of time for language courses, especially at the start. In 2017
  • we held six applicant days for the intern selection process at various locations. These provided an opportunity to get to know each other in a relaxed atmo­sphere. The focus was not on perfect applications, but on face-to-face con­ver­sation. Our experiences have been really positive, which is why we want to help even more refugees into work in Germany in 2018. Not just at Deutsche Telekom, but also at supporting partner companies that want to offer jobs but have no exper­ience of employing refugees. As a technology partner, we also support the www.handbookgermany.de information portal where refugees can find out about living, studying and working in Germany in a range of languages.

True or false?

  • “Pope supports Donald Trump”. Placed on social media, this message has been shared hundreds of thousands of times, liked and commented on. This is far from trivial: made-up news can have real political consequences and even influence election results. However, it can be difficult to decide if messages like this are true or not. We want to raise awareness of how to view digital information with a critical eye. That’s why we invited all of our employees in Bonn to attend the “1001 truths – trust and opinion forming online” activity day in July 2017. One speaker in the workshops and rounds of talks and discussions was Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, who revealed how fake news works. As a result of positive feedback from the activity day, we’ve created additional materials on the theme of “opinion-making on the Internet”. These are aimed at children and teenagers, adults and seniors, but also at people who can disseminate the message, such as teachers, mentors and HR managers in companies. From summer 2018, the material will be published on our portal www.medienabersicher.de. It will be available in German and English and also in easy-to-understand language. This will help people with learning disabilities or those who don’t speak German fluently to understand the information.