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: Rua da Guiné - Bairro dos CTT, 1675-468 Caneças
Country: Portugal
Project: Digital Citizenship Education for Democratic Participation
Working language during the project:
- Portuguese
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:
- Linguistic, communicative and plurilingual skills and Knowledge and critical understanding of language and communication
Through the production of a school newspaper (printed since 2016, and online in 2020), and the production of TV news services (since 2018) - Knowledge and critical understanding of the world: politics, law, human rights, culture, cultures, religions, history, media, economies, environment, sustainability
Apart from communication, the project is now focused on problem-based learning through STEAM activities (focused on preschool children). Developed activities aimed building multiple literacies, citizenship, analytical and critical thinking, resilience and creative thinking. - Co-operation skills
Activities (planned by teachers and researchers, having in mind the children interests) involve school staff, parents, other relatives and members/entities from the local community.
Target group age range:
- 5 - 11
Level of education:
- Primary education & Preschool education
Short description of the project:
The project Digital Citizenship Education for Democratic Participation (‘Educação para a Cidadania Digital e Participação Democrática’) began in 2015, and currently involves around 200 kindergarten and primary school children, their families, teachers and other members of the Caneças educational community, a neighbourhood in Odivelas, Lisbon. The project’s methodology is action research, its objective is to understand how a coordinated action by a school, families and the community contributes to enabling 3- to 9-year old children to become active digital citizens.
From 2015 to 2018, at the field level, the project was organised in five phases:
- Production and validation of data collection instruments (2015);
- In-service teacher training course in Digital Citizenship Education (Jan-Feb 2016);
- Longitudinal study with teachers who volunteered after the training course (Mar 2016-Feb 2018);
- Data collection from parents, children and out-of-school entities (Apr-Jun 2016);
- Share results with participants and involve them on a digital citizenship education intervention plan (Sep 2016-Feb 2018).
Between January and February 2016, the researchers conducted a training course for the teachers on using media to organise and implement social participation activities, involving pupils, families and the community.Afterwards, eight teachers in a school in Caneças, attended by about 200 kindergarten and primary school pupils, accepted to be part of a community intervention project. Researchers characterize this context so as to define an intervention strategy.
In September 2016, at a meeting between lecturers and researchers, it was decided to create a printed school newspaper with four main goals in mind: i) reinforce the link between the school, the families and the community; ii) ensure that children have the opportunity to express their opinion through the media; iii) reinforce their critical sense in relation to the media and to social issues; iv) foster democracy at school and in the community.
Aware of the contradiction of having a project on Education for Media Citizenship based on traditional printed media, the project team nevertheless decided to implement the project, as this was the only way to overcome the limitations of its context. The first step was to select the name and logo for the newspaper by means of a contest, open to all pupils. The name most voted was ‘O Cusco’ (The Busybody). The first edition was published in December 2016, and the next (8th) edition will be published in December 2020.
It had two main outcomes. On the one hand, it increased children’s participation and social intervention, thus contributing to the development of their citizenship skills. On the other, it became a sustainable project, taken on by the school, which has continued to develop digital citizenship skills, by continuing to publish the school newspaper, nowadays considered the newspaper of the school and educational community, where it is distributed for free.
Children’s social participation has increased in and outside the school, in collaboration with the teachers, the families and the community. According to the teachers’ perceptions, interaction in formal, non-formal and informal contexts has contributed to shaping the children’s practices as citizens. However, they participate mostly through traditional printed media, which has gradually changed to digital media, with the production of a video news broadcast.
This situation can be explained due to the lack of equipment and to teachers’ limited skills in digital media production. To overcome this problem, a new phase (Oct 2019 – Sept 2022), funded by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, is being implemented, aiming to develop STEAM activities, to implement the online newspaper edition and the production of TV News services. It involves the local government, the school grouping and a private university in Lisbon.
Aims/objectives
The project’s main objective was to understand how coordinated action by a school, families and the community, contributes to enabling 3 to 9-year-old children to become active digital citizens. It also aimed to contribute to identifying best practices in all contexts, to influence public policies, and to integrate digital citizenship education in the curricula. Finally, it was intended to be replicable in Portugal or abroad.
Objectives of the new phase (2019-2022) are focused on the development of competences related to communication and problem solving.
Expected results/outcomes
Empowering digital citizens at preschool and primary school levels and involving the local community, implementing a “whole school approach” strategy.
Changes
Children’s social participation has increased in and outside the school, in collaboration with the teachers, the families and the community. According to the teachers’ perceptions, interaction in formal, non-formal and informal contexts has contributed to shaping the children’s practices as citizens.
Challenges you faced
Therefore, although adults and children are active and frequent users of digital media, this does not mean that they are ready to produce (more complex forms of) media content. Even when producing material for traditional media, for the newspaper to become a reality, it was crucial that the intervention methodology was action research, with support given to the teachers by the researchers. This is evidence that these kinds of projects must include frequent and significant support provided to the schools or institutions they are being developed in.
The projects must also have the support of the Group’s School board (Agrupamento de Escolas), which was essential in this case. At least one teacher must coordinate the project in the school (in this case, it was the school coordinator) and, if possible, one media professional should be included, who can assist teachers and pupils in producing media content, as was the case in this project. Moreover, this project is not complete, as a second stage is necessary that will involve more researchers and media professionals who can train children to deconstruct and analyse media content, as well as produce content with consideration given to the adequacy of the techniques and ethical and deontological aspects.
Time-frame of the project:
2015-2022
Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:
- Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture
- Compass
- Compasito
