17.05.2019

Parents and students participate in a lecture about fake news

The first TeenAge Talk meeting, an event that invites parents and students to reflect on topics that permeate the teenage years, brings one of the most recurring themes nowadays: fake news.

To talk about the subject, Beacon welcomed Antônio Gois, journalist and president of the Association of Journalists of Education, columnist of the “O Globo” newspaper, and commentator of CBN radio. Gois addressed mainly the mechanisms that feed and often make people spread lies or even distrust information from reliable sources.

By presenting examples and research work, the specialist pointed out that what most drives us to believe in fake news is our previous beliefs, a pleasure to be right, and he quoted the book “The Influential Mind”, which takes us on an exploration about the mechanisms used by our brain to make decisions.

In another study Gois presented, the only group that had more confidence to deal with fake news, and was able to have critical thinking regarding this theme, was that in which the subject had been worked on at school. Therefore, it emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and of the school’s role in facilitating this kind of inquiry, according to the journalist.

Antônio also talked about the lack of time to read articles in this era of immediacy, in which links are shared only by the title, by the headline, quite often sensationalist.  This dissemination of news without a previous in-depth analysis of the themes is one of the main tools for fake news proliferation. In order not to spread lies, please always check the truth of the facts by researching in more than one information source, distrust extreme facts with a very strong appeal, and do not rely only on the information that a close relative is sharing.