Disinformation is a threat to social peace all over the world
Every year, billions of euros are spent on the deliberate production and dissemination of disinformation. It is aimed at manipulating opinions, increasing instability and polarisation in societies, and making public discourse more divisive.
One counterforce is journalism, a method used by the news media to produce reliable information. In order to remain independent, editorial teams must be able to finance their own operations. While disinformation is free for users, journalism is at least partly behind paywalls.
The Democratic Epistemic Capacities in the Age of Algorithms study shows that encountering disinformation has become part of our everyday lives: a third of both Twitter’s (X) and TikTok’s Finnish users reported encountering disinformation often or very often. For example, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare completely withdrew from Twitter in early 2023 so that its account would not provide a platform for sharing false information related to vaccinations and COVID-19. Disinformation, which may look like news from well-known news media, has been used, for example, to disseminate content criticising Ukraine. At the same time, the significance of TikTok as a news channel for young people in Finland has grown rapidly. Almost one-half of 13–18-year-olds get their news from TikTok. In December 2024, Romania became the first EU country to cancel elections due to foreign election interference on TikTok.
The changing logic of algorithms and the rapid development of generative AI make identifying disinformation difficult – but not impossible! One way to assess the reliability of information is to start by finding out about its background: the different sources of information and their motives. Information literacy requires knowledge-based skills and monitoring of current issues. These can be used to evaluate new information in a broader context. It is also important to take a critical look at one’s own knowledge, views and any cognitive biases: The information that we choose to believe influences our actions and decisions every day. As well as those of others: each of us is also a communicator of information in our own right.
Video: A missing aircraft results in the spread of accurate and false information
EgyptAir flight 804 from Paris to Cairo vanishes from the radar in the middle of the night. Within an hour of first becoming aware of the aircraft disappearing, the news media provides more detailed information about the situation and attempts to find out what has happened, piece by piece. However, from the very first moment of the news breaking, disinformation also begins to circulate. Spreaders of disinformation have different motives: political, economic, ideological – even simply trolling and sowing confusion.
Video text
Slideshow: Evaluation of information requires information about information
- Information is easy to find, but is it reliable?
- The interpretation of facts is always influenced by the context
- Algorithms and biases affect our information
- Journalism produces reliable information
- Journalism is based on the Journalist’s Guidelines
In-depth text on which the slideshow is based
Greetings from the editorial team!
Journalist, teacher of journalism Tuomas Pulsa’s letter to a student: “I’m not on TikTok. Still, I can guess why it’s become the number one news source for your age group.”
Independent task S1.1: To see it is to believe it?
Team task S1.2 (3–4 people): Truth or fiction?
Team task S1.3 (3–4 people): The anatomy of a news report
S1 Task slides
Precise sources for teaching information evaluation
You can learn how to navigate the content jungle
Commercial content, clickbait titles, satire, trolling, propaganda, biased publications, fake media, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, errors and misinformation. Sisältösekaannus.fi delves into a wide range of ways of influencing, manipulating, misleading and disseminating false information. The material is based on the study “Informaatiokaaos ja luottamus perinteiseen journalismiin” funded by the Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland.
Being aware of mental trickery reduces its impact
The Kognitiivisia vinoumia (Cognitive biases) infographic prepared by the Finnish Society on Media Education is a handy way to get to know the different forms of mental trickery. What is the meaning of confirmation bias, false consensus bias, the ostrich effect, black and white thinking, the anchoring effect, the halo effect, motivated reasoning, the illusory truth effect, conservatism of beliefs, illusory superiority and the consensus effect?
Algorithms also have political consequences
The operating logic of algorithms causes biases, but they also replicate existing social biases. Rajapinta ry brings together information technology and social science researchers. The Algoritmit, ihmiset ja vallankäyttö(Algorithms, people and the use of power) text discusses how algorithms not only affect our data, but also continuously collect new data about us, which can have political consequences and an impact on whose voice is heard in society.
Journalism is about choices
The Juttu vaatii valintoja (An article requires making choices) graphics go over the different choices in the journalistic process. The task of journalism is to act as a watchdog, reveal misconduct, monitor the words and actions of decision-makers and other wielders of power, bring out different perspectives, and offer citizens the opportunity to form their own informed opinions. At the same time, journalists also wield power by choosing what they report on and how, and perhaps what they do not report on.
The Journalist’s Guidelines from the points of view of the user and the target of journalism
The Vastuullistajournalismia.fi website explains the Journalist’s Guidelines from the points of view of the rights of the public and the rights of the subject of an article. The website also provides access to genuine complaints submitted to the Council for Mass Media on the basis of which students can consider the ethics of communications themselves. The tasks have been designed flexibly so that you can spend anywhere between ten minutes and three hours on them.