DE FACTO Providing educators with a science-based toolbox to understand and counter misinformation and disinformation

Project summary

We live in a world which is increasingly governed by information. It flows in every direction and imprints on every aspect of our professional and social lives. Information is also the key ingredient in education and training. This is why it is very important that we can rely on its accuracy so that we can make our decisions, form opinions, produce arguments, participate in positive debates. Yet there are those who, willingly, produce disinformation. Their objective is to deceive, to confuse, to spread fear and uncertainty. And there are others who, unwillingly, help them by repeating what they believe is true, spreading disinformation. And form opinions which are misinformed, and, ultimately, believe things that are not true to be true. This is an oversimplification of very complex processes which Cognitive Science has began to understand in the last few decades, but which remain unknown to the wider audience. Cognitive science tells us how our brains receive and process information, how they decide which information to keep, and which to reject, which are the factors that weigh in when we decide whether to believe an information or its source, how our brains make a lot of decisions for us and without us even consciously knowing that this is happening. We believe that education and training contexts should be free from misinformation and disinformation. And that we should try and find ways to avoid being consciously or unconsciously manipulated. That's why we created DE FACTO. It is our way of putting science in service of educators to improve the quality of teaching and learning. We have identified four major scientific concepts, the four pillars around which we built our project. They are: Frames (Batheson. Lakoff), Systemic Causality (Lakoff), Motivated Cognition (Hughes, Zaki), Equivalency and Emphasis Frames Chong, Druckman). Frames Thinking contexts (e.g. school frame) which are well defined and which have clear semantic roles - the textbooks, desks, the whiteboard, the teacher and the students are all objects with a semantic role of their own which dictates their expected behavior or function. We tend to judge objects, actions and facts as real/true when they correspond to the frame, and as not real/false when they do not. These frames are, however, different for each person, so the judgement about something being real/true is subjective. This explains why a single fact or information can be evaluated and perceived in a different manner. Systemic Causality Systemic causality (as opposed to direct cause-effect) is not a naturally occuring learning concept because the brain is unable to observe it. In reality, most of the disinformation is not binary in nature (yes/no, white/black), but systemic. Motivated Cognition Studies show that motivation affects cognition in various domains including self-perception, person perception, and intergroup relations. These social contexts activate goals that bias information processing at several stages: visual perception, attention, memory, decision-making. Equivalency and Emphasis Frames Equivalency frames offer statement phrasing which is different, but logically equivalent, and this causes individuals to alter their preferences. With emphasis frames, people make different judgements depending on which aspect of a statement was intentionally emphasised by the researchers. Based on these 4 pillars, we will develop a toolbox for educators which will consist of: - A classification of types of misinformation and disinformation - Sample detection algorithms - Disinformation case studies - Disinformation production kit - Guidebook to fact-based reading and teaching containing: Systemic causality learning kit, Motivated cognition learning kit, Understanding frames learning kit - Blueprint for authoring disinformation and disinformation case studies We will conduct 4 trainings for educators where we will demonstrate the 4 pillars and how they work, and we will present the tools which we have developed so that we can understand what is happening and what we can do to make sure that we can distinguish between true information and false information, understand why some things are neither true, nor false (or are both), why and how people produce disinformation and how this affects us. We will reach directly 70 educators through our trainings, and no less than 140 in workshops. Further, we will send these tools to adult and VET education and training organisations. We are sure that after the educators, when they set a new learning project or assignment, demonstrate how powerful they are, the learners will willingly adjust their behaviors and habits with regard to information they receive and produce. We are expecting cascading impact and hope that there will be many more projects and initiatives like this one to make us more confident in what we know, more reflective and independent in our opinions, and less vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation.