Project Description
Anti-Rumour raises awareness regarding fake news and conspiracy theories with a focus on disinformation surrounding environmental awareness and social inclusion. The project addresses young people in particular, who are more familiar and present in social media and can quickly transform into active media producers rather than passive media consumers.
We all receive news actively or passively on a daily basis. Sometimes we scroll though and sometimes we linger a bit longer. But let’s take a moment to think.
Have you ever come across an analysis or article multiple times on social media which gave answers to social, or environmental challenges of our times such as climate change or certain aspects of human rights, however you found it hard to track the source or you identified that there was no scientific backup behind it?
Never before has it been so easy for any citizen or association of any kind to express their own opinions or create and disseminate any kind of news. This represents an expression of our right for free information. However, information can be misleading, manipulated or deceiving in many ways. Fake news and false information is one of the global challenges that our society has been facing in recent decades, especially in recent years, with the spread of social media platforms. Fake news and disinformation has threatened current crucial issues such as climate change, immigration, public health policy, social inclusion or democratic institutions, by placing distrust, skepticism and sometimes hate into public narratives.
Therefore, it is fundamental that young generations are able to develop a critical mindset, enhancing their media literacy and fostering objective and verified information.
The Anti-Rumour project is aimed at addressing this challenge by promoting media literacy among youth and young organisations, through the provision of online and physical resources that all together enhance the user’s capacities for identifying, understanding and combating disinformation. The project’s aim is to:
- Promote media literacy: clarify concepts regarding what are fake news, in what contexts are they used, misinformation vs disinformation, analysing conspiracy theories and its main features…
- Provide methodologies and practical strategies for spotting and combating fake news
- Offer online resources, available in the European context, to be used for debunking and identifying fake news.
- Use a gamified approach to promote media literacy among youth, more specifically, fostering critical thinking and online researching skills in the context of conspiracy theories.
- Enhance the participation of young people in democratic and civic life in partner countries
- Grow scientific trust and support as well as environmental crisis awareness to fight against climate change
- Strengthen active citizenship by enabling young people to connect with civil society organisations and NGO working on media literacy using the results of this project, which further increase social inclusion and build up on European values
- Ensure media empowerment and the protection of democratic institutions against false narratives and polarization dynamics
- Provide lesson plans, adaptable to any European context, to train young people on the importance of acknowledging the problematic of fake news spread, main interests involved, deceiving techniques, real life examples, main dangers involved…
In a world where the inflow of information is ongoing and constant, there is a crucial need for all citizens and especially young people to have knowledge and tools to discern different types of disinformation and not allow it to influence their way of thinking and decision-making.
Anti-Rumour responds to these needs by accompanying youth in a journey that takes them through the process of understanding, analysing and dealing with misinformation in an easy and engaging way.
Results:
Anti-Rumour Guidebook “Fake News, Conspiracy Theories and How to Spot Them”
The Anti-Rumour Guidebook serves as a handbook for youth workers and young people to raise awareness of how misinformation/disinformation is spread in the media. It explores the history behind disinformation and its purpose, highlights the importance of media literacy in preventing the spread of false information, and suggests effective techniques and best practices for debunking misinformation. In addition, the Anti-Rumour Guidebook looks at how AI has changed the information landscape in recent years and how it has been used to manipulate the truth, but also to combat AI disinformation.
The objectives of the guidebook are:
- Raising awareness regarding the conspiracy theories and the threat they pose, especially against young people/the climate/marginalized communities;
- Addressing the problems that young people face with misinformation related to environmental awareness, climate change, global warming and social inclusion;
- Increasing awareness on the pedagogical benefits of media literacy to identify, diagnose and combat misinformation;
- Helping youth connect the dots between phenomena such as fake news and conspiracy theories with the crisis that democratic and civic life in Europe is going through;
- Identifying the negative impact that fake news and conspiracy theories have on a wide variety of human rights, including the rights to life, self-determination, development, food, public administrations, civil society organisations and individuals;
- Involving more youth organizations who want to get involved in media literacy.
- Identifying the negative impact of disinformation/fake news created and/or disseminated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and raising awareness on how to identify such information.
- Raising awareness on how AI can be used with the purpose of manipulating the truth.
Building these skills will not only help build an informed generation able to identify and dismantle hoaxes, fake news and conspiracy theories, but will also strengthen the resilience of democracy and provide youth workers with the necessary skills to help young people combat disinformation at all levels.
A Toolkit for identifying disinformation and strengthening media literacy
The Anti-Rumour Toolkit is a collection of 20 online tools that help youth workers and young people to:
- Identify conspiracy theories and disinformation
- Learn about currently circulating fake news
- Strengthen media literacy and gain awareness regarding disinformation methods and manipulation tactics
The included tools are online applications (e.g. chatbots, search engines) that help with verifying information that is found online, serious games that strengthen media literacy and information literacy, tools that help evaluate sources’ credibility, as websites that regularly publish fact-checking articles as well as tools that can help detect AI-generated content. We cluster these tools into three categories: Online Fact-Checking Tools, Serious Games and Tools to Identify AI-generated content.
Each tool is accompanied by instructions on how to use it as well as information on its strengths and weaknesses, contexts of use, supported languages and suggested age groups for users. For the more complex tools, the Anti-Rumour toolkit also provides short tutorial videos.
The Anti-Rumour consortium selected these 20 tools based on the needs of youth workers and educators in the four partner countries, which were assessed via an online survey, while keeping a balance between different types of tools, supported languages and suitability for usage in Cyprus, Germany, Greece and Spain.
Serious game on literacy and against conspiracy
There are great benefits to including games in the learning process as they make learners more engaged and motivated. The Anti-Rumour Serious Game seeks to provide the learners with an environment to put the knowledge they have acquired from the project’s guidebook and the toolkit into practice.
The Anti-Rumour Serious Game consists of a cooperative game that focuses on assessing learners’ skills and their ability to identify messages they came across in different types of media, analyse them objectively and understand what kind of information they are receiving.
In this game, players will challenge their ability to discern and identify false narratives, as well as immerse themselves in the creative process of how fake news are spread. The game is role-play based, setting a youth-oriented scenario, and challenging participants to apply their skills and knowledge to produce or verify fake news and false narratives. Through an engaging interactive dynamic, players will be able to enhance their media literacy, exploring media, understanding bias and checking information sources. Furthermore, the nature of the game builds and strengthens participants’ critical and creative thinking.
It represents a useful tool, through which young people can learn about fake news and disinformation, but most importantly, have fun!
Physical Version
Online Version
Anti-Rumour Learning Modules
The learning module consists of a series of lessons (4 in total) that will teach youth organisations and youth workers how the previous results (the Guidebook, the Toolkit and the Serious Game) can be proven helpful for enhancing media literacy and critical thinking skills among young people. Each lesson integrates theoretical input and practical activities, following the Design Based Education principles (DBE). DBE is thought to allow educators to experience firsthand the methods they will be using with their students. In the context of Anti-Rumour, this methodology has been chosen because it allows participants to apply theoretical knowledge into practical contexts.
In other words, this lessons are made so participants actively implement and test strategies for identifying fake news, including real-case scenarios, online fact-checking tools, AI generated content, group activities, etc.
Each lesson includes a Lesson Plan, on how to apply, which further helps facilitators for its implementation.
Lesson 1: Combating fake news regarding social inclusion and LGTBI+
Conspiracy theories targeting marginalized groups have emerged as a pervasive and concerning phenomenon, posing significant challenges to societal cohesion and exacerbating divisions within communities. This module will provide strategies and knowledge on how to tackle false harmful narratives against underrepresented communities.
Lesson 2: Combating fake news regarding environmental awareness & global warming
Climate change represents one of the most prolific areas for producing fake news and disinformation. It is a complex issue involving intricate interactions among scientific, environmental, economic, and political factors. This module intends to teach and provide learners with the capacity of understanding fake news and false narratives around climate change and the impact they have on it.
Lesson 3: Conspiracy Theories and its key features
Conspiracy theories and fake news’ backbone is their connection to the dichotomy of “Us Vs Them”. Conspiracists usually see the world divided into “us”, who are usually the pure people, and “them”, who are the corrupt elite, the establishment that is evil and controls everything in a mysterious way. This lesson focuses on this element of conspiracy theories and wants to battle such phenomena by raising awareness of the theory behind them.
Lesson 4: Media Literacy - Protection & Empowerment
An approach that looks at the need to be critical media consumers in order to take control of the media messages that we are surrounded by. This lesson will aim at providing strategies on how to identify trustworthy news media/newspapers, and how to cross-check resources, and how to identify AI created content. The ultimate goal is to teach participants on how to transform themselves from passive media consumers into active media producers.
Partners
Stiftung Digitale Chancen
(Digital Opportunities Foundation) is a non-profit, operational foundation based in Berlin. Since 2002, it has been researching the social consequences of digitization and advocating equal opportunity access to the Internet for all people.
With numerous projects at national and European level, the foundation pursues the goal of digital inclusion, participation and equal opportunities, thus counteracting a digital divide in society.
Dramblys
DRAMBLYS is a non-profit organisation located in Spain that works for the promotion of social innovation. In DRAMBLYS we combine sociological imagination & inquiry with social creativity and design to approach, explore, and innovate solutions to contribute to sustainable development. Our main programmes and areas of expertise include programmes design and evaluation, data visualization and social innovation design, development and management. In DRAMBLYS the aim is to facilitate creative dialogues and co-create sustainable alternatives and so, to inspire new social entrepreneurs and community leaders & promote sustainable ways of living.
Citizens in Power
Citizens In Power (CIP) is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization from Cyprus that addresses the needs and demands of people through their involvement in social and civic life, by simultaneously providing them innovative material and free trainings related with a variety of fields, such as education (including on-line education), inclusion, entrepreneurship and business, culture, labour market and lifelong learning.
CIP mainly aims at the development of education, entrepreneurship and lifelong learning in Cyprus and abroad. To achieve these targets CIP has an ongoing collaboration with the leading universities, schools, NGOs and research organizations in Cyprus for the development of projects, trainings and educational material. CIP retains a valuable network of professional trainers and educational experts experienced in both formal and non-formal education.
Challedu
CHALLEDU is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that pioneers new models of learning, inclusion and engagement. CHALLEDU constitutes one of the leading R&D experts in game-solutions for education and inclusion. Our team consists of project managers, researchers, educators, game designers, developers, graphic designers and facilitators who design and implement playful experiences, games, formal and non-formal educational programs, tools, platforms and applications based on cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary approaches. We focus on 2 main sectors: education and innovation, social inclusion.
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