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UNDERSTANDING FAKE NEWS: AN INTEGRAL PART OF MIL

Definition: When people talk about ‘false information’ or ‘fake news’, they are referring to information that has been fabricated, falsified, or distorted and purposefully spread by individuals, activists, or political officials with the intent of manipulating the public and converting them to their ideas.

Spreading false information can be detrimental to a society, as when the aim is to target or accuse a minority group in order to stoke fear and incite hatred toward that group. This is also the case when false information is used to create a feeling of insecurity in pursuit of electoral ambitions; manipulating information turns out to be an extremely effective tool.

Example: There was an uptick in anti-migrant protests in the runup to the general elections in Serbia that took place on 21 June. On 2 March 2020, around 500 people had already gathered in Subotica, a city in the far north that borders Hungary, to denounce the ‘crimes’ committed by migrants within Serbia despite the fact that, according to police data, violations committed by refugees made up a mere 0.06% of registered offenses in the country.

Some news events and scandals, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the United States, in which millions of users’ data were used to target them for fake news, reminds us of how manipulated information has an impact on our lives, from our daily life to presidential elections.

Example: In Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 2020, a 51-year-old woman who had just returned home from a trip to Italy tested positive for coronavirus and was harassed by social media vigilantes after erroneous information was published by a number of media outlets, which stated that she had been to a concert and taken public transport. Some Facebook comments declared that she deserved to be killed because she was infected and that she should never have returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The upshot is that, by distorting, manipulating, and falsifying reality to stoke hatred and win people over with false arguments or information that does not exist, false information undermines the very notion of truth and citizenship in modern societies. Fake news tends to prey on our emotions and prejudices, often confirming our opinions, which makes it easy to spread and take hold on social media. This in turn amplifies its detrimental effects on the quality of available information.

For this reason, because information is essential to our lives and at the heart of our decision making as well as our relationships with others, it is vital that we preserve its reliability and transparency to avoid potential manipulation as much as possible. Beyond being mindful of information quality, thinking critically about the content you read or receive helps limit your risk of manipulation or external influence and form a more balanced view.

OUTSMARTING DISINFORMATION TRAPS

There are a number of ways to fight disinformation:

Better control the spread of information online by holding platforms and ‘web giants’ accountable (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.). These companies have all enacted measures along these lines by giving users the option of flagging false information and deleting accounts that spread hate speech and fake news as well as by launching and promoting prevention campaigns. For example, in January 2020, Facebook announced that it would delete and ban ‘deepfake’ videos on its platform.

It should be noted, though, that letting Big Tech regulate their platforms’ content themselves may be problematic in terms of freedom of expression and censorship since the web giants’ hegemony looms so large. For this reason, some countries have independent bodies in charge of overseeing both the activities of traditional media as well as ensuring that information is checked and users are protected on these online platforms.

Sensing the urgency of the matter, many countries have also acted, often taking the legislative path, to live up to their role in monitoring and ensuring the reliability of the information that flows within their borders. However, caution is required so that any measures enacted to limit disinformation and bolster methods of control do not, paradoxically, also limit the media’s and people’s freedom of expression, which would hinder the work of journalists.
It is also possible to prepare the public to confront the rising amount of false information, manipulated images, and increasing, rapid spread of conspiracy theories. Campaigns such as teaching critical media and information literacy seek to encourage the public to protect themselves against these manipulations by arming them with knowledge and teaching them to think critically and for themselves.
Finally, awareness can also be raised among traditional media. A new kind of journalistic activity has emerged recently in certain countries as well as at a more international scale to mitigate the risks of disinformation: fact checking.

FACT CHECKING

Origins and definition

With the rise in false information and doctored videos and images, especially on the internet, journalistic methods of handling and verifying information have become so vital that many media outlets have recently developed specialised fact-checking websites.

This new journalistic activity originally consisted of systematically verifying politicians’ statements and elements of public debate – such as figures or legislative content. However, as fake news has increased and with it the dangers of disinformation, fact checking today has come to mean quickly ascertaining the truth in a fact, image, or rumour and, more broadly, in any type of information that circulates online.

The limits of fact checking

Although fact checking is a useful tool for verifying information, it must not become an immutable declaration of truth. Indeed, some questions cannot be resolved by simply checking facts, as is the case with issues of politics, opinion, or morality. As its name states, fact checking is about staying factual and checking specific facts.

Moreover, the methods of verifying information may sometimes be incomplete or dependent on other bodies. For example, a fact-checking website looking to determine how many people attended a demonstration would have to trust the numbers released by either the authorities or the organisers of the demonstration, which will almost certainly lead to huge disparities.

Therefore, caution and critical thinking should be encouraged here as well to determine when to trust a fact-checking website and when an issue should be examined more objectively.

CHAPTER 4 – MEDIA AND CITIZENSHIP

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FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Freedom of expression is a right: the right to freely express your thoughts.

While freedom of expression gives everyone the freedom to think and express their opinions, it has its limits: care must be taken to avoid defamation, injury, incitement of hatred toward any group on the basis of religion, skin colour, or sexuality, and encouraging terrorism and war crimes.

Freedom of the press is a reflection of the freedom of expression. It guarantees that citizens will have all the necessary information to form an opinion freely.

The role of newspapers is to enlighten readers and encourage citizens to discuss ideas. To do this, journalists follow certain rules. They can talk about any topic, but they must take care to check their information to ensure quality.

In some countries, press freedom is under threat and journalists are kept from covering certain events or criticising the people in power. Each year, the NGO Reporters Without Borders publishes a world press freedom ranking.

JOURNALISM ETHICS

Journalism is a field that involves researching information, verifying it, putting it in context, categorising it, formatting it, providing commentary on it, and publishing high-quality news; it is not to be confused with communication.
Journalism as a profession: The idea of urgency or publishing a scoop must not take precedence over serious enquiry and the verification of sources. To work properly, journalists must be able to carry out all of the activities of their profession (enquiry, investigation, capturing images and sound, etc.) freely and have access to all information sources relevant to the facts that affect public life. They must also be able to guarantee the secrecy of their sources.
The Munich Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Journalists, written in 1971 with participation of all journalism syndicates at the European level, provides guidelines for practicing ethical journalism. According to the declaration, a journalist worthy of the title must:
Respect human dignity and the presumption of innocence;
Regard a critical mind, truth, accuracy, integrity, equity, and impartiality as the pillars of journalism;
Regard baseless accusations, intent to harm, altering documents, distorting facts, doctoring images, lies, manipulation, censorship and self-censorship, and a lack of fact-checking as the gravest professional abuses;
Exercise great vigilance before divulging where information comes from;
Be entitled to follow up on interviews, which is in turn holds them accountable for the information they reveal and ensures rapid correction of any such information that should prove to be inaccurate;
Defend the freedom of expression, opinion, information, commentary, and criticism;
Shun any disloyal or corrupt methods of obtaining information;
Not receive payment from any public service, institution, or private enterprise in which his or her standing as a journalist, influences, or relationships are vulnerable to exploitation.

CHAPTER 3 – INFORMATION AND MEDIA

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DEFINITIONS

1.) Media are, above all, physical support for the mass spread of information, including print, radio, the internet, and television.

The supply of information has grown and diversified

After World War II, the information available to us increased, as did the types of media: households acquired televisions, radio stations multiplied, and numerous magazines and newspapers were founded. This is the start of ‘mass media’. After that, the amount of available information grew larger and more varied than ever before, a trend that has continued into today’s digital age, which has fundamentally changed how we get information.

Our relationship with information has changed

As the information available to us has grown and diversified, it is our relationship with information that has changed, especially with the dawn of the internet in the early 90s. Media are a true democratic check on power and have become vital to people’s lives. This includes during election campaigns for example but also extends to the entire year; the media are representatives’ and officials’ primary means of getting the word out about proposals, debates, and policy.

In addition, the changes to the media landscape, especially the advent of the internet, has increased the spread of ideas and opinions that were once on the periphery – that is, less accepted by public opinion – such as conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies. This has made it easier for them to spread among the general public.

However, less visibly, the media also provide structure and professionalism. That is, they represent a system that is organised both economically (funding structure, pay structure for journalists) and socially (knowing what it means to be a journalist, best practices, uses, journalism training).

2.) Information, in the context of critical media literacy, is a conveyed fact that comes from sources that have been identified, verified, and corroborated. This may also include contextualisation that explains or interprets the fact through a social, cultural, and political lens. Furthermore, information must fulfil three criteria:

Of public interest: To be considered information in the media and social sense of the word, a fact must be of public interest. For example, one arbitrary citizen’s presence at a football match does not constitute information that is likely to be of interest to all the other citizens.
Factual: Information must involve fact; it must be factual. Following on our example, this means that the score of the match or a player’s being injured on the field are information in their own right because they comprise observable facts, actions, and results. Conversely, rumours of a player being transferred to another club or any potential tension there might be within the team are not information in and of themselves.
Verified and verifiable: To confirm its status as information, a fact must be verified and verifiable. In other words, we must pay heed to the idea of proof to check the fact.

HOW THE MEDIA CONVEY INFORMATION

In print media, there are three possible ways of transmitting information, which are used by a variety of journalistic styles:

Explained information: The journalist analyses the facts, breaking down information and informing readers of the ‘how’ and ‘why’. This writing style is used for analyses, investigative pieces, dossiers, and interview pieces.
Commented information: In this type of writing, journalists have more freedom to interpret and decipher the facts by using humour, giving their opinion, or giving their opinion or judgment. This writing style is used in editorials, op-eds, columns, caricatures, and criticism.
Straight news: In this very narrative journalistic style, journalists present and recount the facts in detail. This is the style used in news briefs, press wires, news reports, minor news items, meeting minutes, and witness accounts.

THE INFORMATION CYCLE

The information cycle has a number of different steps:

The fact
The alert (the reporter is informed by a source)
Verification (multiple reporters are called upon to go on site to interview organisations, people, or institutions involved)
The media outlet may hold an editorial meeting. The editor-in-chief calls in the heads of the different sections to decide whether to send journalists to the scene to cover various angles: description, hypothesis, backstory, straight news, story of the day, etc.
During the writing process, the journalist drafts the article or opinion piece, which the editors then proofread, add captions to any photos, etc.
After the information is corroborated, it is time for publishing. The information is published as a breaking item, an alert, or a dispatch depending on its importance.

Note: Having a scoop means being the first to publish a piece of news. Other media can use it, but must state where they got it from.

CHAPTER 1 – WHAT IS MEDIA LITERACY?

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ISSUES SURROUNDING MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERACY

In general terms, media and information literacy encourages knowledge and understanding of media and information to improve public debate and social participation.

MIL brings together two separate areas: mastering information emphasises the importance of access to information, analysing it, and using it ethically. Media literacy emphasises the ability to understand the purposes of media, evaluate how media work to achieve these purposes, and make rational use of media to express oneself.

This field allows instructors to:

Emphasise the role and purposes of media in society as well as the conditions under which media achieve these purposes.
Integrate and convey the tools to evaluate media content critically.
Create quality information media with the target audience.

To fully grasp the global impact of MIL, it must be stressed that a society that knows how to handle media and information and encourages the development of free, independent, and pluralistic media is more likely to encourage meaningful public participation.

TEACHING MIL: VARIOUS APPROACHES

Teachers of MIL should use a variety of pedagogical approaches:

The ‘problem – research’ approach consists of identifying an issue, recognising the attitudes and beliefs surrounding it, clarifying the facts and principles associated with the issue, organising and analysing avenues of research, interpreting and resolving questions, enacting measures, and reconsidering the consequences and results of each phase. This approach allows students to develop critical thinking skills and can be useful for analysing fake news and conspiracy theories.
Case studies involve examining one situation or event in depth. This approach provides a systematic method of observing events, collecting data, analysing information, and communicating results.
Cooperative learning can mean simply working in pairs or extend to more complex methods such as project-based learning, learning with puzzles, guided questioning by peers, and reciprocal teaching.
In textual analysis, students learn to identify how codes and linguistic conventions are used to create particular perceptions targeted at certain audiences (‘technical’, ‘symbolic’, and ‘narrative’ codes for media content).
Contextual analysis seeks to help students become familiar with topics such as classification systems for film, television, and video games, the link between property and media concentration, and matters of democracy and the freedom of expression.
In rewriting students can, for example, collect a series of existing visual documents connected to a person’s life and use them as a starting point for planning and creating a short documentary on that person.
In simulations, students can, for example, roleplay as a television crew producing a programme on young people. The strategy is discussed with students as a pedagogical process.
Finally, production gives students the chance to dive into learning through discovery and practice. By producing media content (audio, video and/or print), students can explore their creativity and express their own opinions, ideas, and perspectives.

FAKE NEWS & CONSPIRACY THEORIES

DEFINITION

The term ‘conspiracy theory’ describes a historical or political explanation that assumes the existence of a ‘hidden truth’. Conspiracist fake news has 6 main characteristics:

1. It involves a secretive, highly powerful group working in the shadows (lizard people, Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, NASA, Freemasons, etc.);

2. This group uses a very large number of (strategically placed) people in all parts of society – such as government, media, police, and universities – in order to keep the ‘secret’…a secret;

3. Conspiracist fake news contradicts the official version, that is, the version supported by scientific consensus or accepted by the majority of the media or government;

4. It traces an event back to a single cause. For example, the war in Iraq happened because …it advanced the lizard people’s agenda!

5. It is impossible to refute. Regardless of how robust your criticism of it may be, believers will always allege that the critics are in on the conspiracy…or they are just clueless.

6. Conflation is rampant. For example: We know that the American government lied to start a war in Iraq, so it must have lied about the moon landings. Believers in these theories may eventually develop an encyclopaedic knowledge of arguments they favour, even if none of them can prove the theories’ validity.

CASE IN POINT: A CONSPIRACY THEORY WEBSITE IN NORTH MACEDONIA

Natural News is a far-right website based in North Macedonia that is known for spreading false information that feeds various conspiracy theories.

Notably, Natural News was one of the most prolific spreaders of a conspiracy theory video that falsely claimed that a shadowy cabal of elites was using the virus and a potential vaccine to gain money and power. The 26-minute video, entitled Plandemic showed a discredited scientist, Judy Mikovits, who attested that her research on the damage caused by vaccines had been buried. Plandemic was put online on 4 May 2020 when its creator, Mikki Willis, posted it to social media. According to the New York Times, ‘For three days, it gathered steam on Facebook pages dedicated to conspiracy theories and the anti-vaccine movement. Then it tipped into the mainstream and exploded. Just over a week after Plandemic was released, it had been viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram’ (source : link).

FAKE NEWS & POLITICS

DEFINITION

Political fake news refers to ‘misleading allegations affecting the honesty of an election that are deliberately, artificially, or automatically spread en masse via an online communication service’. The term disinformation campaign is used when fake news spreads on such a large scale that it translates into wilful attacks on an election’s integrity so as to destabilise the ruling regime by tapping into fears, nationalism, and authoritarianism.

The emergence of these disruption methods in closely tied to the rising power of digital platforms, which make it possible for fake news on a given candidate to go viral and have a non-negligible impact on public opinion.

Political fake news may be all virtual, but its impact is real. For one thing, they have destabilised elections in multiple countries over the past few years.

This is why digital platforms, governments, and the international community are enacting increasingly serious measures to try and prevent disinformation campaigns, including by regulating social media and stocking up the legislative arsenal.

CASE IN POINT: FAKE NEWS MACHINES IN MACEDONIA

During the 2016 US presidential campaign, the city of Veles, Macedonia, became the ‘fake news capital of the world’. Influenced by powerful state forces, some one hundred young Macedonians joined veritable ‘fake news machines’, whose goal was to use the internet to inundate American public opinion with an uninterrupted barrage of fake news in order to make candidate Donald Trump win.

These young people were earning around 10,000 euros per month to create fake accounts and make up fake articles. One of the most common fake news pieces sought to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s credibility by spreading rumours to tarnish her image. The mendacious allegation that ‘Barack Obama was funding Hillary Clinton’s campaign with money stolen from veterans’ came from Veles and gained significant traction in the US.

The website ‘The fake news machine: inside a town gearing up for 2020’ documents and analyses hundreds of web pages created in Veles whose primary goal is to manipulate information to help the Republican candidate win.

According to Xhelal Neziri of the Center for Investigative Journalism Macedonia (SCOOP), the fake news machines in Veles were led remotely by the country’s nationalist party, which was in power at the time. As Neziri explains, ‘our investigation shows that this operation was coordinated by the previous government. A platform of young people who were already publishing misleading health care articles was used to swing political opinions during the Macedonian parliamentary elections and then the American presidential election’ (source (in French): ‘Veles, capitale mondiale des fake news, RFI’ – link).

CASE IN POINT: FAKE NEWS DESTABILISING ELECTIONS IN UKRAINE

The March 2019 presidential campaign in Ukraine, which bestowed victory on comedian Volodymyr Zelensky – considered to be pro-Western – was marked by disinformation campaigns seeking to discredit him.

According to the international news agency DW (link), ‘Russian-language fake news… consumed the country’s media landscape’ during the election’. DW estimates that ‘the most popular fake news articles appeared on Facebook, shared by accounts with up to 2 million followers’.

On 5 January, shortly after comedian Volodymyr Zelensky announced his presidential candidacy, a Facebook page managed by bbccn.co published a fake news article to tarnish his reputation. The article claimed that the public prosecutor of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, had launched criminal proceedings against Zelensky for planning to overthrow the constitutional order. This article got more than 20,000 reactions online, but it is obvious that the rumour comes from manipulated information: no charges had ever been pressed against the comedian.

In the same vein, a fake website falsely purporting to be Zelensky’s own was identified by fact checkers. One post on the site was a fictional declaration in which Zelensky stated his desire to make Russian the official language of Ukraine, a proposal that is nowhere to be found in the candidate’s campaign platform.

DW’s article ‘Is Ukraine’s presidential election threatened by fake news’ gives more detail about the disinformation campaigns aimed at preventing the civil-society candidate from winning.

FAKE NEWS & PROPAGANDA

DEFINITION

Propaganda is a term for the persuasive techniques used to disseminate an ideology or doctrine and to encourage the target audience to adopt a set of behaviours. Throughout the 20^th century, certain ruling regimes institutionalised propaganda to manipulate the masses.

Nowadays, propaganda is primarily used by governments to stymie the freedom of the press. In a 2017 report (link), UNESCO expressed its concern about the rise in attacks on the media in the form of propaganda and fake news. Some governments use these disinformation techniques to ‘denigrate, intimidate, and threaten the media, including by stating that the media is “the opposition” or is “lying”’.

Anti-media propaganda from governments has also been observed in the Balkan region. The Courrier des Balkans has noted that in many countries, “the distortion of facts is used as a weapon against independent journalists, civil society, and political opponents to discredit them”.

CASE IN POINT: FAKE NEWS USED AGAINST JOURNALISTS IN MOLDOVA

During the 2019 legislative elections in Moldova, high-ranking officials contributed to propaganda and disinformation campaigns targeting independent media. According to the Courrier des Balkans, this state-supported fake news reached 54,000 users via fake Facebook and Instagram accounts.

One target of this fake news was Cornelia Cozonac, who heads up the Center for Investigative Journalism of Moldova (CIJM), which covers corruption scandals. A group of ‘trolls’ cloned her account and posted a number of messages under her name to attempt to discredit her reporting. In the same way, cyberattacks were launched against the CIJM website, which publishes investigations into Moldovan electoral candidates.

The propaganda campaign even garnered a reaction from Facebook. The company published a press release stating that ‘although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our manual review found that some of this activity was linked to employees of the Moldovan government’.

FAKE NEWS & THE PANDEMIC

DEFINITION

So much fake news has come out about the Covid-19 pandemic that a new term has emerged to refer to the mass disinformation: ‘infodemic’.

The word ‘infodemic’ refers to the wave of misleading information on coronavirus that has recently been unleashed on social media and search engines. Speaking in the context of the health crisis, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) stated that ‘fake news [linked to Covid-19] spreads faster and more easily than this virus and is just as dangerous’.

With the pandemic has come malicious false information derived from conspiracy theories. The following pieces of fake news were particularly widespread around the world: ‘The virus that causes Covid-19 is a man-made biological weapon’; ‘The Italian government is keeping migrants from getting tested for Covid-19’; ‘The Covid-19 pandemic was predicted in a simulation’.

In this context, the media, governments, and the international community have developed fact-checking bodies to fight disinformation about the virus and re-establish scientific truths about the disease. Some of these fact-checkers include: The World Health Organisation’s Mythbusters; Newsguard; and EU vs Disinfo.

CASE IN POINT: THE BALKANS IN AGE OF CORONAVIRUS

The Western Balkans have been heavily affected by false information relating to Covid-19. One fact-checking platform has focused in particular on debunking fake news about the pandemic circulating through the region: RASKRIKAVANJE.RS.

There are myriad examples to show how the infodemic has spread in the Balkans. In Bosnia, hate speech has been seen online, as was the case for a 51-year-old Bosniak woman. After returning home from a trip to Italy and testing positive for coronavirus, she was harassed by social media vigilantes after erroneous information were published by a number of media outlets that stated that she had been to a concert and taken public transport (none of which was true).

Marija Vučić, of the investigative site Raskrikavanje, says ‘these irresponsible publications are very dangerous in the current context, especially for people living in small communities. They are even afraid to go out onto the street because the locals hold them responsible for spreading the disease. This can really put some people in danger.’

As the Courrier des Balkans explains, ‘the region’s tabloids have followed in the footsteps of social media by spreading unverified information on the pandemic’.

For example, the Serbian tabloid Alo! (https://www.alo.rs/) falsely claimed that the worldwide number of infected people was decreasing. This is wrong: the downward trend has only been observed in a small number of countries. This type of mendacious content drives Sandra Bašić Hrvatin, a professor at the Faculty of Humanities of Slovenia, to say that ‘the avalanche of false information on social media has created a climate of mistrust of science, experts, and institutions. The media must not give in to sensationalism, rather, their role must be to explain the nature of the virus and indicate preventive measures using official and professional information.’

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL MECHANISMS OF THE INFODEMIC

As the Covid-19 pandemic developed, the world saw a rise in conspiracy theories, fake news, and challenges to the official version of the origin and spread of the disease, as well as its severity. A large portion of the populations of severely affected countries, as well as those of countries less affected, were taken in by a variety of conspiracy theories and hoaxes. This comes as no surprise given that the disease is not just associated with medical expertise, but also triggers a social and psychological dynamic that is associated with conspiracies.

These theories arise when people try to give meaning to an event that otherwise seems to have none. What they are trying to do is use conspiracy theories to explain the events.

This tendency is especially strong when there is major cognitive dissonance between cause and effect. For example, a pandemic that triggered by multiple people becoming randomly infected by animals that then leads to millions of cases and almost half a million deaths around the world by mid-June 2020.

Conspiracy theories always focus on a malicious plot, often led by a small group of people against one nation or the world. The effect is that individuals are both disarmed and relieved of any responsibility.

Conspiracies are especially rife when the events affect people personally, as with the pandemic, and when trust in established knowledge and those who provide that knowledge, such as the government, science and the media, is weak.

FAKE NEWS & THE ENVIRONMENT