In questo articolo:
Truth has been a topic of discussion for centuries. Is there really a “true” truth? Protagoras himself – a pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century BC – with his “man as the measure of all things”, had realized that truth is relative: it is made of points of view, opinions, convictions, social conditioning… Difficult to say we really have it “in our pocket”.
About lies, instead, there’s no questioning: a lie is objective, measurable, coming from a specific and exposable author. If well built it can be difficult to be found out, but fake is and remains fake, no doubt. News Included.
Social Media Marketing Day 2017, a forerunner of digital cues
And just fake news was one of the issues at the heart of the fifth edition of Social Media Marketing Day Italia, an annual event dedicated to social and digital trends, held in Milan on June 14.
Of the much food for thoughts – comprising the whole digital science of the moment, from LiveStreaming trends to the use of social media for associations, press offices and institutional public relations, from crisis management to data security – I was particularly impressed by the intervention of Renato Vichi, UniCredit, Head of Media Relations, who addressed the issue not only from a journalistic but also from a corporate point of view (being able to cover, due to his curriculum, both the roles).
What did Vichi say in his half-hour speech? To sum up, he said three things, concatenated with each other:
- the responsibility for the spread of fake news is also of each of us, which is not trivial because one always tends to wait for the Holy Spirit to intervene and make justice;
- fake news is not only a misinformation problem (which is serious in itself as well), because it can also cause immense image damage to the reputation and therefore also to the heritage of the brand ending up as a victim;
- we can fight it, as long as our brain is switched on (ok, putting it this way I see the objective risk it’s getting to win, sob!).
How fake news spread
Let’s start from responsibility, which belongs to everyone. The birth of so-called citizen journalism, supported by social media, has transformed anyone into a generator of information (not by chance, social media make a living of UGC, User Generated Content).
As a result, some of journalism’s key principles (such as deontology, source verification, cultural and professional tools that should ensure a certain quality standard in the spread of news and information, and so on) have come to nothing. On the contrary, the opportunities for propagating fake news have multiplied.
On the same wavelength as Renato Vichi is also Professor Marino d’Amore, lecturer at the Ludes Hei Foundation Malta, who, in a very interesting article, framed social disinformation as follows:
– an instrumental use of the message, deliberately built either to make the information more popular, or to gain greater political or commercial consensus, or to highlight some aspects of a story and to shade others;
– the audience’s appalling appetite for gossip, which has almost imposed the “gossiping” of the news even to the most celebrated traditional newspapers;
– the ingenuity, or rather the superficiality of many readers, who prefer a partisan belief in unfounded news rather than questioning it, since truth would be more uncomfortable (or less satisfying);
– the uncritical attitude of the audience, which has so much helped fake makers, providing fertile ground to anyone wishing disinformation or, worse, propaganda.
Who must “fight” fake news?
Let’s neither wait for an abstract entity to intervene soon or later, nor for an algorithm by Facebook able to annihilate fake news, nor for governments putting a brake on this plague (the form of government controlling information and setting up what is true and what is false is called totalitarianism, and may God preserve us from the temptation to invoke the public powers’ intervention for fake news).
If we want to effectively counteract this phenomenon, then we have to invest in culture and digital literacy. How?
- Turning on the brain (there must be a key somewhere, they tell me…).
- Thoroughly reading the contents (so to really understand what the news says – sometimes this is enough to realize its inconsistency).
- Training a greater sense of responsibility in sharing and disseminating news we are not sure about.
- Developing greater capacity to distinguish satire and parody of true information.
- But above all reaching a certain degree of familiarity with the concept of “source” and hence gaining a greater ability to identify the most trusted sources for feedback.
Against fake news, antibodies must be developed since childhood
All this is really feasible, so that while we are here discussing (and any opportunities to confront on these issues are welcome), in Sweden it’s time for action: the Ministry of Education has already provided programs for the Elementary schools, starting off from 2018, which will devote more hours to both computer science and critical analysis of information. Actually, if the spread of fake news comes from an audience unable to recognize them, providing that audience – right since childhood – with “cultural software” able to eradicate all that fake is a radical solution for sure.
In Sweden, furthermore, the theme is so significant that even teddy bear Bamse, starring a comic which is very popular among Swedish children, last February addressed it in a simple language, living up to the youngest.
When will such an operation show up in the Italian schools as well?