Misinformation, Disinformation, Fake News: can social media be a trusted news source?

The rise of social media has changed how we perceive and handle information. For many, social media has become their main source of news, but can it be a trusted news source? Not always.

Never has it been so easy to access, publish and share information. Anyone can create, within minutes and sometimes anonymously, one or more Facebook or Twitter accounts. Social media platforms, by design, encourage users to share information effortlessly through a click of a button, and yet, information often gets distorted along the way. Users are likely to share information without fact-checking, especially when it contains controversial or emotionally charged content and turns into Misinformation, Disinformation or Fake News. The emotional reactions of users contribute to the speed at which information spreads, and the sheer volume of information that people are now subjected to makes it very difficult to assess truthfulness.

What is MEGA?

“MEGA – Make Europe great again” is a project co -funded by the Erasmus+ Program. The aim of the project is to equip participants with the critical thinking capacities needed to unmask Europhobic myths and enable them to implement an innovative approach for empowering young people to critically analyze Europhobic distortions of the European Union and to learn to act as "European ambassadors", i.e. to convincingly spread realistic images of the EU among their peers. Youth workers also learn how to apply quiz-based learning and create quizzes with and for young people.

MEGA Trainings

The MEGA training involved several young people from different countries. It will take place in December and January – even if in some countries some sessions have already been held. We received really positive feedback about our game-based approach to the topic: participants truly appreciated both the content of the modules - https://mega.dieberater.com/ - and the games, especially the creation of dark stories. Young people told that the training helped them to better understand and “put in order” their general knowledge of the EU and that games represented a funny and creative tool to address fake news indeed!

 

The main goal of the training is to raise awareness on fake-news and Euroscepticism with the gamified methodology designed during the project. Therefore, participants gained knowledge related to fake-news and Euroscepticism and learned about the main tools to unmask fake-news. During the training, participants also had the opportunity to get to know the MEGA platform and play quizzes to unmask fake-news on EU, as well as, to work in groups and create dark stories.

 

Who said that fighting Europhobia, EU myths and stereotypes is a strictly academic task? Actually, there are so many creative and fun ways to apply towards this goal. ‘’Dark Stories’’ are one among them.

 

“Dark Stories” is a card game which must be played in group. A person – namely the “narrator” - picks a mystery and reads its description aloud. Then he/she reads its solution without telling the other people. The overall idea is that the rest of the players then have to make yes/no questions in order to solve the mystery. So, ‘’Dark stories’’ is a very smart and attractive way to capture the attention of your friends, classmates and youngsters of your organization. Plus, it’s a methodology which does not need any special equipment. Just the most precious one: intriguing imagination!

 

As a result, participants were very satisfied with the training and found the activities fun and educative at the same time. While coming up with the “Dark stories” by themselves and playing afterwards, they managed to utilize the ‘’Dark Stories’’ methodology towards combatting EU myths and stereotypes and expanded their imagination in general in matters of how to address social issues throughout a creative way.

Next Steps

If you are interested in becoming better equipped with new MEGA methods in online gamification and non-formal education, encouraging young people to spot the fake news and reject the false Europhobic myths in circulation, strengthening the trust in the European Union, send an email to mega@three.p2n.de and get involved into the project.

Partners

Would you like to know more about MEGA
or learn more about the ongoing activities?

About MEGA

 

MEGA project stands for Make Europe Great Again and is a two-year project

funded by the Erasmus+ Programme (project number 2019-3-DE04-KA205-018681)

 

Date of project: 01/02/2020 – 31/01/2022

Newsletter developed by CESIE

 

View web version

You have received this e-mail at press.office@cesie.org because you are subscribed to CESIE newsletter.
We recently updated our Privacy Policy. Renew your consent to data collection here.
If you do not want to receive our newsletters anymore, please click here to unsubscribe.