Training course “How to stop infodeformation in YOUth”
One of the victims of spreading disinformation are young people. They often do not have enough knowledge to evaluate if the news are true or false, though we must admit that this is very difficult for all individuals as nobody an expert in all subjects. What can and should we do in order to protect young people against the negative impact of disinformation and manipulation? We should help them build their capacities and strengths to make them more resistant to fake news and manipulative intentions of the environment they live in. We should help them recognize the disinformation, hoaxes, fake news by identifying their common traits and specific types of their sources. We should develop their abilities in the area of critical thinking. We should spread awareness about the dangers of disinformation and show its perilous effects. It’s necessary to uncover the false stories and show the true story behind while pointing at the dishonest intentions of the disinformation sources.
One of the important actors that should help young people become more resistant to fake news and manipulation are youth workers. They are in direct contact with youth. This Erasmus+ training course was attended by 25 youth workers from partner countries.
Our objectives were:
– to discussed the problem of disinformation, fake news and hoaxes
– to illustrated the national insights into the issue of fake news, disinformation or propaganda and to learnt to identify different forms of manipulation and found the efficient means to confront it
– to improved the personal capacities to oriented themselves in the huge sea of information and to recognized good quality sources of information
– to strengthened the certain competences – ability of critical thinking, including enhancing the abilities to concentrate and understand our emotions which play an important role in communication and news processing; upgraded the competences in argumentation and discussing
– to organized follow-up activities with youth to deliver this knowledge to our target groups.
By this project the youth workers practiced role-plays, solved various examples that were provided for improving the effectiveness of the training of participants in different training’s subject matters. They disseminated the received knowledge and practical information further among colleagues, peers and all others.
The training employed the tools of non-formal education of young people which is a proven potent method that has already been actively applied in the previous projects. The training was significantly oriented into future as it concentrates also on follow-up activities of the training participants. These were used their newly acquired knowledge, experiences and methods in their further work with youth.
Partners:
TOPLUMSAL KULTUR VE GELISIM DERNEGI, Turkey
System&G Finland Ry, Finland
System and G Ukraine, Ukraine
INSTITOYTO EREVNAS KAI KATARTISIS EVROPAIKON THEMATON, Greece
Follow Your Dreams, Belgium
Zachodniopomorska Wojewódzka Komenda Ochotniczych Hufców Pracy w Szczecinie, Poland
JTF DSE, Hungary
The training schedule anticipated the cooperation with Slovak Debate Association, a Slovak journalist from major Slovak news platform, Representation of the European Commission in Slovakia and we equally reached out and proposed the cooperation with Slovak activists engaged in the area of disinformation or development of critical thinking at schools.
Here you can see some photos from the project: https://www.youthforequality.sk/index.php/2020/01/07/skolenie-training-course-how-to-stop-infodeformation-in-youth/
