Dealing with propaganda, misinformation and fake news
It is vital for schools to provide students with a solid education on media and information literacy as part of the curriculum.
Teachers must be well-trained in the subject to empower students with the necessary competences to critically understand and assess information reported by all forms of media.
Projects in partnership with national and local authorities and media organisations are encouraged.
Facts & figures
Two thirds of EU citizens report coming across fake news at least once a week.[1]
Over 80% of EU citizens say they see fake news both as an issue for their country and for democracy in general.[2]
Half of EU citizens aged 15-30 say they need critical thinking and information skills to help them combat fake news and extremism in society.[3]
What is propaganda, misinformation and fake news?
The terms ‘propaganda’, ‘misinformation’ and ‘fake news’ often overlap in meaning. They are used to refer to a range of ways in which sharing information causes harm, intentionally or unintentionally – usually in relation to the promotion of a particular moral or political cause or point of view.
It is possible to separate out three clearly different uses of information which fall into this category:
- Mis-information - false information shared with no intention of causing harm
- Dis-information - false information shared intentionally to cause harm
- Mal-information - true information shared intentionally to cause harm.[4]
Although none of these phenomena are new, they have taken on new significance recently with the widespread availability of sophisticated forms of information and communication technology. The sharing of text, images, videos, or links online, for example, allows information to go viral within hours.
Why is propaganda, misinformation and fake news important at school?
Since information and communication technology is so central to their lives nowadays, young people are particularly vulnerable to propaganda, misinformation and fake news. Young people spend a significant amount of their time watching television, playing online games, chatting, blogging, listening to music, posting photos of themselves and searching for other people with whom to communicate online. They rely heavily on information circulated online for their knowledge of the world and how they perceive reality. Many parents do not have sufficient technical competence to keep up with their children’s online activity, or educate them about the risks they might be facing. Schools, therefore, have a duty to provide young people with the critical and information skills which they cannot access at home.
“The significant rise of fake news as propaganda in recent years makes it critical that students have the skills they need to identify truth and discern bias.”[5]
The ability to respond critically to online propaganda, misinformation and fake news is more than a safe-guarding tool, however, it is also an important democratic competence in its own right. Analytical and critical thinking, and knowledge and critical understanding of the world, including the role of language and communication lie at the heart of the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. They are central to Digital Citizenship Education and Media and Information Literacy.[6]
“School is the one place where it is absolutely crucial to train future citizens to understand, to criticise and to create information. It is in schools that the digital citizen must begin and maintain constant critical thinking in order to attain meaningful participation in his or her community.”[7]
The ability to handle off-line as well as online propaganda, misinformation and fake news is also a key skill in a number of other school subjects, e.g., History, Social Studies, Science, Religious Studies and Art. Young people may study the use of nationalistic and patriotic slogans, or so-called ‘atrocity propaganda’ in WW1 in History, for example; or art forms designed to support particular ideologies in Art lessons.
Another area in which information and communication technology is becoming an issue for schools is through adverse comments made about teachers and schools on social media. Schools are finding that parents and others increasingly turn to social media when they have a dispute or disagreement with their school, e.g., over school rules, school policies, or staff behaviour. How to handle online critical or defamatory comments or campaigns of this sort has become a matter of concern for leaders and managers in some schools.[8]
What are the challenges?
There are a number of challenges facing schools wishing to take propaganda, misinformation and fake news seriously as an educational or social issue:
- Teachers’ own online activity and area of experience is often quite limited and frequently lags behind that of their students. This can make them reticent to take on this area of teaching and learning without a significant commitment to professional development.
- The speed with which technology and young peoples’ online activity changes makes it difficult for teachers to keep up-to-date with recent developments. Even professional development programmes can go rapidly out-of-date.
- It can be difficult finding a discrete slot in the school timetable where issues relating to the creation and sharing of information can be taught. While aspects may be raised in a number of subjects, it can be a problem finding a space in an over-full curriculum where the phenomenon can be dealt with head-on as an issue in its own right.
- The description ‘fake news’ does not mean there is such a category as ‘true’ news. All news is a selection and written to suit a particular audience for a particular purpose. Providing the depth of analysis and sophisticated skills that do justice to this topic can be a challenge for some schools, especially in terms of teacher competence and training.
“States should take measures to promote media and digital literacy, including by covering these topics as part of the regular school curriculum and by engaging with civil society and other stakeholders to raise awareness about these issues.”[9]
How can schools get active?
Providing training for teachers on media and information literacy is the key to raising the profile of the issue in schools. Even though it may have a tendency to date, training can at least alert teaching staff to the importance of this area of learning for their students. The more important teachers see the area, the more they will feel the need to continuously up-date their skills themselves.
While it is important to recruit as many teachers as possible to this work, it can be more effective in the long run to start by appointing an individual teacher, or a small team, to lead on media and information literacy in the school. This element of specialist expertise can be charged with:
- Keeping staff up to date with new developments in information and communication technology
- Training them in strategies for handling propaganda, misinformation and fake news
- Helping them integrate these issues into the curriculum of different subjects
- Leading on school-policy development and action planning in this area.
In addition to these sorts of developments, there are a number of other initiatives a school can take to meet the challenges of the rapidly changing world of online propaganda, misinformation and fake news. These include:
- Special days or events in school on the subject of propaganda, misinformation or fake news as a way of overcoming the problems of an over-crowded formal curriculum
- Peer education initiatives in which older students instruct and counsel younger students in the safe handling of information they access in the media
- Partnerships with outside professionals or companies with expertise in this area, e.g., journalists, IT companies, universities
- Virtual links with schools in other regions or countries enabling students to get a different perspective on news and current affairs
- Recruiting parents with expertise in information and communication technology to help with school policy development or work alongside teaching staff to enrich student learning.
[1] Flash Eurobarometer 464 , 2018
[3] Flash Eurobarometer 455, 2018
[4] Wardle & Derakhshan, H., 2017. Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe.
[5] When is fake news propaganda?, Facing History and Ourselves, 2018
[6] Digital Citizenship Education Handbook, 2019
[8] Council of Europe: Managing Controversy: a whole school training tool, 2017
[9] OSCE: Joint declaration on freedom of expression and “fake news”, disinformation and propaganda
Resources on Dealing with Propaganda, misinformation and fake news
Related schools projects
Address:
Country:
Project: “Let your greatness blossom”
Working language during the project:
Themes of the Council of Europe campaign “FREE to SPEAK, SAFE to LEARN - Democratic Schools for All” covered:
- Making children’s and students’ voices heard
- Addressing controversial issues
- Preventing violence and bullying
- Dealing with propaganda, misinformation and fake news
- Tackling discrimination
- Improving well-being at school
Competences from the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) addressed and where / how they were integrated:
- Valuing human dignity and human rights
Valuing democracy, justice, fairness, equality and the rule of law
Our school works on the topic of inclusion and has even won an inclusion prize. We try to avoid the word inclusion as it points out special groups of students that are often separated and discriminated. We prefer the word democracy because inclusion is a question of participation and anti-discrimination and human rights. - Knowledge and critical understanding of the world: politics, law, human rights, culture, cultures, religions, history, media, economies, environment, sustainability
Our school got the Title and is part of a national network called „school without racism - school with courage“. We are profoundly proud to have won Esther Bejarano, a 94-year old holocaust survivor as a partner and sponsor of our anti-racism project. - Respect
In Rhineland Palatinate each school decides for annual targets. Our annual target is to work on respect. Different projects and measures took place in the last year to work on this topic, e.g. respect day, respect being a topic in different subjects and lessons…
Target group age range:
- 5-11
- 11-15
- 15-19
Level of education:
- Lower secondary education
Short description of the project:
We understand democracy and anti-discrimination not only as an object of learning but we want to enable our students to understand, learn and apply competences of a democratic culture through two underlying areas.
One area comprises reliable, recurring structures in different areas, which are either anchored in the school year or recur during everyday school life. In order to give a small insight into this area, I would like to mention, for example, the dispute resolution programme learned by students after a basic training, reliably carried out for all students and frequently used in everyday school life. In the lower level e.g. team and cooperation trainings take place regularly.
The pupils of the higher classes regularly visit the Rhineland-Palatinate parliament and discuss with politicians who also come to the school for a return visit. Visits and participation in didactic programmes at a concentration camp memorial site and a synagogue are also regular events.
Every year our entire school community also supports the campaign „Red-Hand-Day“ which can be assigned to the learning area of world understanding.
Currently in the planning stage is the training of students who see themselves as multipliers and who should give advice to their classmates on how to deal with propaganda or hate speech online and offline.
The second area contains those projects, events or competition participations which we develop from the needs and questions or suggestions of our students or from social movements or changes. This includes in particular the area of controversial issues and problems that students often bring to us and which arise from their natural willingness to create and participate. These are often not easy to solve in class discussions and sometimes it takes more than lectures and conversations to understand connections or controversial questions of living together in a society.
In 2016 for example, when millions of people set out and our students saw endless suffering, they began to ask questions about a world in justice, a world without discrimination or bullying - they observed insecurities in society and asked „WHY“. Taking up these suggestions, we designed a project week under the title "we are colourful", which mixed pupils of all levels and which dealt with the topics of origin, impairment and racism in a creative and diverse way and from which, among other things, the project "School without racism - School with courage" emerged within the framework of a working group organised by pupils. The initiating group of pupils first informed themselves, then the school community and collected signatures from all those involved in everyday school life who - convinced by our pupils - committed themselves to stand up against racism and discrimination. Esther Bejarano, a 94-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, became a godmother for this project and our students were full of pride in their enthusiasm for a two-day reading and concert event with her. They folded 300 peace doves and just as many buttons for the guests of the event, which was opened by the then Federal Minister of Justice (Dr. Katharina Barley) and at which our inclusive school choir sang as well.
But there are more projects in our house, such as the implementation of a "Respect Day", on which our students dealt with a wide variety of contexts - such as visiting an exhibition by and with visually impaired people in complete darkness, working out ways of reacting to discrimination or violence in everyday life in linguistic as well as graphic, musical and theatrical ways. Theatre plays on the subject of racism were written, staged and performed in front of other schools at an event for "fairness, peace and tolerance".
Our pupils actively supported the municipal "Special Olympics" with their help. In a workshop with wheelchair users, they practised a change of perspective and would not have the common breakfast before school holidays, which often takes place in the classes, where pupils bring specialities from their countries of origin to school - the start into free time would only be half as nice.
Last but not least, I would like to mention the area of competitions: last year we won second place in the inclusive school prize and in 2017 first prize in the Rhineland-Palatinate "One World School Prize" with a short film (stop motion) in which one of our pupils with Down Syndrome was significantly involved.
In every part of school life, be it projects, events or teaching content based on the curriculum, we strive to involve every pupil and to show them that without their participation the big picture of school life is not complete. This means that we open ourselves up in a didactic and methodical way in the classroom and integrate methods away from the purely frontal teaching that positively serve the inclusion of every form of impairment, aptitude, origin and linguistic level, but also make use of the most diverse learning locations.
Aims/objectives
- implement the reference framework in democratic, agreed way
- students and adults for aspects of discrimination in every day life
- find ways to reduce barriers, participate, cooperate and take responsibility for the school (world) we live (and learn) in
- see ourselves as part of the world and world in parts at the same time
Expected results/outcomes
- All students feel welcome and being a part of their class and the school community.
- Students from our school participate e.g. in town parliament
- Students recognise barriers against participation and develop ideas to reduce them.
- Class parliaments take place in every class - more and more in a student focused way
Changes
We are still at the beginning of implementing the competences of a democratic culture in our school development concept. As a result we want to want to transfer our implicit work on this matter into a reflected and agreed concept that works step by step and includes methods of evaluation. This frame is supposed to ensure that projects as well as subjects are included and democracy becomes visible in our school culture.
Challenges you faced
Step by step, our school was able to anchor the idea that projects could not only be designed on a large scale and with the greatest possible power available, but that small steps could also get the ball rolling. In an increasingly performance and certificate-oriented society, it is sometimes difficult to explain why these projects make a major contribution to the comprehensive and holistic education of a child, not only at the level of preparation, implementation and reflection - and that the scope of the cognitive output often extends far beyond the current project. This can be seen particularly clearly in the example of projects which are based on democratic structures when it comes to the involvement of each individual in project development, planning, stabilisation of conception and implementation.
Time-frame of the project:
- Long lasting project (never ending)
Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:
- Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture
