MODULE 3: DIGITAL AWARENESS

The move to an increasingly digital environment gives students many new ways of expressing themselves and of finding and accessing diverse information and views. At the same time, it also enables an increase in the amount of various kinds of disinformation in circulation. In the framework of the PRACTICE Radicalisation Prevention Programme, The Digital Awareness module explores the spectrum of ‘information disorder’ and defines how Media and Information Literacy (MIL) helps in combating it, applying the tools related to fact-checking and giving an overview on social media verification, assessing sources and visual content.

After the completion of this module, you will be able to:

1. Understand the different types of misinformation, disinformation and mal-information, as well as where these types sit on the spectrum of ‘information disorder’.
2. Understand how ‘information disorder’ is affecting democracy, open societies as well as the consequences that it has on education, politics, business and private life particularly focusing on teenagers
3. Understand how harm and falsity are ways of thinking about ‘information disorder’
4. Understand and critique the role of technology and the ‘new gatekeepers’ (i.e. social platforms) in enabling the viral distribution of disinformation and misinformation, presented as news
5. Distinguish fact from fiction as well as the legitimacy of potentially diverse narratives and stories within authentic journalism
6. Understand the emergence of fact-checking as a distinct form of journalism as well as the ethics and methodology of the practice
7. Understand the questions to ask when assessing the quality of evidence
8. Understand how to approach a social media verification, assessing sources and visual content

While the impact of fabricated contents has been well documented, contemporary social technology created an information pollution at global scale, a complex web of motivations for creating, disseminating and consuming these ‘polluted’ messages; a lot of content types and techniques for amplifying content; several platforms hosting and reproducing this content. The phenomenon of Information disorder covers satire and parody, click-bait headlines, and the misleading use of captions, visuals or statistics, as well as the genuine content that is shared out of context, imposter content and manipulated and fabricated content. For the purpose of the Module 3 of PRACTICE Radicalisation Prevention Programme, we consider the notion of information disorder as coined in a recent report commissioned by the Council of Europe. From a theoretical point of view, information disorder spectrum includes three notions: mis-information (when false information is shared, but no harm is meant), dis-information (when false information is knowingly shared to cause harm) and mal-information (when genuine information is shared to cause harm, often by moving information designed to stay private into the public sphere).

To understand any example of information disorder, it is useful to consider it in three elements: 1) Agent: who were the ‘agents’ that created, produced and distributed the example, and what was their motivation? 2) Message: what type of message was it? What format did it take? What were the characteristics? 3) Interpreter: when the message was received by someone, how did they interpret the message? What action, if any, did they take?

In addition, it is also productive to consider the life of an example of information disorder as having three phases: 

Everyone who seeks to convince others, has an incentive to distort, exaggerate or obfuscate the facts. It is important that students are equipped with a methodology to detect fact-checkable claims and evaluate evidence critically. Fact-checking can mean a proofread and verification of factual claims made by journalists in their work. However, the fact-checking that is part of this section of PRACTICE Radicalisation Prevention Programme happens not before the content is published, but after. The term describes entirely fabricated sensationalist stories that reach a wide audience by using social media algorithms to their advantage. In 2016 the most searched word on Google was ‘fake news’. This new wave concentrated on fact-checking public claims as debunking these viral hoaxes.

Generally speaking, fact-checking is composed by three phases: 1) finding fact-checkable claims, determining which major public claims (a) can be fact-checked and (b) ought to be fact-checked; 2) Finding the facts by looking for the best available evidences regarding the claim at hand; and 3) Evaluating the claim in light of the evidences, usually on a scale of truthfulness. These are obviously general steps, also because fact-checking is not an exact science and there is not a software that will examine documents and flag anytime something has been misstated as fact.

At international level, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) has developed a code of principles that help readers discern good fact-checking from bad. These principles rely on non-partisanship and fairness, transparency of sources and funding, transparency of methodology (to select, research, write, edit, publish the facts) and a commitment to an open and honest corrections policy.

At European level, EUFACTCHECK is the fact-checking project of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA), that intends to build a sustainable curriculum unit on fact-checking within a European network of Journalism schools and nowadays, it gathers fact-checks from more than 150 students and staff from more than 20 EJTA schools. They developed a step-by-step factchecking flowchart to help students and their teachers, to follow a rigorous and uniform methodology in factchecking. The flowcharts are dedicated to:

Steps of fact-checking, credits EJTA

EUFACTCHECK provide also a presentation about the general principles of the methodology and some exercises that can be done to get acquainted with their terminology. Tools for factchecking are developed also at national level.

These tools are free and more or less simple to use and require basic skills to be applied. There are also advanced techniques to explore, such as:

Teachers can approach this Module presenting theoretical learning (e.g. using seminars, readings or lecture-based presentations) and supplemented by practical exercises (e.g. working groups). The main idea is to involve a 60-90 minute theoretical component and a 90 minute-2 hour workshop or practical activities. The sessions can be expanded, contracted and/or divided across different days, depending on the teaching/learning framework of the classroom/students group concerned.

Herewith follow several pedagogical approaches that could be applied: 

It is encouraged that teachers incorporate local/regional, linguistically and culturally relevant materials and examples into the activities – both the theoretical and practical ones. At the same time, teachers should leave out things deemed inappropriate/offensive for a certain student/group of students and/or unproductive. Also, the replacement of text or exercise materials which is considered inadequate for whatever reason, is an option. In addition, it is very important to update the examples and the materials given, to make the lessons purposeful, relevant and, if possible, stimulating for the participants. Another important point is to adapt materials , if in the classroom are present native (or near native) level speakers with beginners. In this case, teachers can: rewrite reading texts and grade the language accordingly for different levels; pre-teach difficult vocabulary and leave it written on the board for students to refer to; draw attention to pictures and visual prompts where appropriate; reduce eventual word limit in written exercises; encourage use of dictionaries; pair or group weaker students with stronger ones; give students time to gather their ideas before a role play or discussion; grade students on the effort they make rather than their ability.  For learners who need extra support with some tasks, appoint helpers such as peers or a special educator/teaching assistant. They can provide assistance in a variety of ways, depending on the learner’s needs: the helper can model the steps of a task before the student performs it on his/her own; helpers can provide additional prompts (verbal, gestual, or partial physical) when students need them; the helper can complete some of the tasks steps with or for the student; the helper can give the student immediate feedback and additional encouragement to reinforce successes. Finally, make sure that the available equipment (e.g. computers, smartphones, interactive whiteboards, tablets and so on) is suitable for the assigned tasks and, if not, tailor the activities on the available ones.