Article by Innohub
On August 21, 1835, the New York newspaper The Sun published what we know today as the first “fake news”. This news, known as “The Great Moon Hoax” reported over six articles about the discovery of life on the Moon. Throughout the publications, it was claimed that the existence of plants, animals, temples and even bat-men or vespertilio-homo, as the newspaper announced, had been discovered.
Today this publication may seem harmless, but at the time, with the lack of literacy and the strong conviction of local newspapers, the audience considered this news to be a real milestone in history. However, not all fake news is so obvious. With years of experience and the viralization of content through the Internet, this type of news is becoming more and more subtle and, therefore, less susceptible to detection.
Whether for economic, political or social purposes, the media relies, to a greater or lesser extent, on the manipulation of information through what we know as “post-truth”. In fact, in 2016, the Oxford Dictionary chose this term as the international word of the year, defined by Katherine Connor Martin, head of Oxford’s U.S. Dictionaries division, as an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.
These circumstances give rise to what we know today as disinformation, i.e. “a form of propaganda involving the dissemination of false information with the deliberate intent to deceive or mislead” according to the same dictionary. In addition, easy access to information may seem a very positive and useful tool, but with the current overexposure to information, it is essential to make the population aware of the dangers of the digital era so as not to encourage this disinformation.
Thus, there is a need to improve the level of media literacy and the dissemination of responsible information, since, thanks to social networks, we live in a context in which we are no longer mere consumers of information, but become “prosumers”, that is, we also participate in the production and propagation of this content.
Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important to raise awareness among citizens so that they become informed and committed to the content they share on their personal and social networks, verify the reliability of the information and sources that publish such content, and improve their media education skills to avoid falling into these scams.
As a response to this need, the IMEDIAL project was born, aimed at adult educators and learners from disadvantaged groups with the objective of developing and increasing the skills and competencies that allow them to combat disinformation, fake news and cyberbullying. In this way, the implementation of this project in educational systems aims to promote critical thinking, information evaluation and media literacy to raise awareness in society of the dangers of social networks and channels.