“Vaza, Falsiane!”: media literacy initiative to fight fake news on social networks

Abstract

The proliferation of false information on online social networks created a scenario of mistrust regarding information sources. Concerns over the threat of fake news has become a breeding ground for collective demands for proposals to combat misinformation. This research is based on studies of social responses to fake news to evaluate the proliferation of fact checking sites, threats of legal control and technical alterations in social network algorithms, contrasting these strategies with the potential of initiatives based on media literacy. Based on the research-action methodology, this paper presents a panorama of media education proposals existing in different platforms (video channels, multimedia pages, face-to-face workshops, massive open online courses), comparing their possibilities of interactivity, participation and public engagement. As a result, it was identified a lack of free, asynchronous, massive, multimedia, interactive, accessible, attractive and potentially viral online media literacy courses. In response to the gaps in this field, the papers develops a new mechanism for combating misinformation using the principles of media literacy, but occupying the same space of proliferation of false news – social networks – and using its specific formats to fight fake news in its environment. Developed as a result of this research, the course “Vaza, Falsiane!” reached 200 thousand visitors in two years, and its contents impacted more than 10 million through Facebook.