Fact-Checking Skills And Project-Based Learning About Infodemic And Disinformation
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
In chaotic and confusing times such as the present period, which is filled with political, cultural economic, technological and social transformations, education represents an essential foundation that provides a better understanding of the current challenges and offers solutions to embrace the changes we are already experiencing. For that reason, education is a valuable asset that favours the development of innovation processes.
In doing so, Zamora-Polo et al. (2019) argue that comprehensive
DISINFORMATION AND INFODEMIC: THE NEW PANDEMICS
Online falsehoods have a substantial impact on public opinion and behaviours (Parkinson, 2016; Read, 2016; Dewey 2016; Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). For that reason, fabricated stories truly represent a global problem, which needs to be urgently addressed (Pal & Banerjee, 2019). Fabricated stories have always existed throughout history (Moore, 2017; Edson et al., 2018); however, in recent years, they have grown as a consequence of the new era of Internet hoaxes (LaGarde & Hudgins, 2018).
Wardle &
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FACT-CHECKING SKILLS
After clarifying the disadvantages and risks of disinformation and infodemics for young people, it is important to propose solutions that address the vulnerabilities of students. In doing so, education should be conceived as the cornerstone of this process, since young people need to be trained in identifying disinformation and discerning falsehood from truth, regardless of whether the information coincides with their ideology or prejudices (Van der Linden et al., 2020). Ideological
Design of the teaching experience: the procedure
The present study describes an innovative teaching experience that has been conducted in the communication degree programme during the academic year 2020/2021 in two universities located in Sevilla and Córdoba (Spain). Participants were first-year high school students enrolled in the Theory of Communication course. This innovative teaching experience is the first phase of an innovative teaching project entitled Dystopian Society: a teaching innovation project in Theory of Communication, which
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results obtained in this study are divided into three parts, each of which is oriented to answer a research question. The first part is focused on identifying the most influential hoaxes about the coronavirus that young people have embraced as reliable information during the 2020 pandemic (RQ1). The second part is dedicated to explaining students’ responses when they are involved in infodemic contexts. At the same time, we also point out the main challenge that arose in a period of
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
The current study has a number of limitations. First, there were no comparisons to a control group, so it was difficult to draw informative conclusions. Second, in relation to the obtained findings, it should be noted that this research provides the foundation for further studies that aim to examine the relationships between social competencies and fact-checking skills. Clearly, further studies are required to test all these proposals.
Third, the current sample was drawn from university
CONCLUSIONS
The present study provides a first in-depth analysis of fact-checking skills within the framework of social competencies. The teaching experience described in this research sheds light on the need to adapt the existing pedagogy methods to the 4.0 environment, to implement a more active teaching process in university classrooms and to popularize the use of more functional, helpful and motivating means, such as digital resources. Although the global health crisis caused by the coronavirus has
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