The era of fake news and disinformation is upon us; and research tells us that Europeans are struggling to deal with it. What worries Europeans most, is that so many of us are unable to tell whether a story is real or false (Statisa, 2018). The frequency with which we encounter disinformation and its potential to influence the way we think, how we vote, and what we believe, has made it an important issue in society today. On average, 66% of European citizens encounter fake news or disinformation on a weekly basis, with 37% of citizens witnessing disinformation on their news feeds every day (Statista, 2019). The term ‘fake news’ refers to media content that shares ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’. While ‘misinformation’ is the unintentional sharing of false information online; disinformation is more sinister. It describes the deliberate and targeted spread of false information with the aim of influencing or deceiving its audience. Disinformation drives the ‘fake news’ apparatus. It is in this realm that we see the weaponization of context in news reports; the falsification of video or images; the contamination of news headlines as ‘click-bait’ – all with the aim of misleading the audience and influencing their opinions and behaviours. While these tools have been deployed in various political realms – the 2016 US Presidential Election, the 2016 Brexit Referendum and the 2019 European Elections being the most prominent recent examples – today, we see the spread of disinformation among our communities in relation to our health. Since the global outbreak of COVID-19, the World Health Organisation have raised concerns over the impact that the ‘disinformation pandemic’ – or infodemic as it has been termed – will have on the health and well-being of citizens all over the world. With targeted disinformation campaigns recommending treatments for COVID-19 which turn out to be hoaxes, spreading fear over the supposed link between COVID-19 and 5G and raising suspicion over side-effects from potential vaccinations that we have not yet developed or tested; the power of disinformation to impact our health and our sense of emotional and psychological well-being is significant. Disinformation and fake news is designed to inundate our capacity to make sense of information. This pervasive use of disinformation sabotages democratic processes by creating distrust, confusion and thwarting the common ground necessary for a democracy. Disinformation only serves to spread fear, anxiety, suspicion, hatred, racism, xenophobia and prejudice among our society. It is time that a new approach is found to support European citizens to address the spread of disinformation in society and mitigate its impact on their local community. Through the MEDIA-HACKS project, we aim to develop such an approach to enhance the media literacy of local communities from the ground-up; by supporting local community members to be producers of reliable media content for their own communities and as well as ethical consumers of content. Through our experience of working with low-skilled communities, the best results have always been achieved when learners are given responsibility and held accountable for their actions. By creating reliable media content, first on a local community level, MEDIA-HACKS aims to support local communities to be accountable for the information that they share with others online; helping to replicate the media ethics of reliable news outlets within a community-media environment. As such, the focus of the MEDIA-HACKS project is to build the skills of ordinary people to cope with the stresses and strains of society today by mitigating the impact of fake-news campaigns aimed at destabilizing the status quo. It aims to build a community media framework that equips local communities with all the knowledge, skills and competences to develop, manage and maintain a comprehensive media service to local residents. The project will pursue an asset-based community development approach to harness the assets within the local communities where partners are based and bring them together under a common community media banner intent or promoting real news about the local area to residents. The MEDIA-HACKS project will develop the following intellectual outputs to achieve its ambitious target: IO1. Community Audit Toolkit and Report IO2. Community Media Skills Development Resources IO3. Toolkit of Media Moderation Resources IO4. In-service Training for Adult & Community Educators IO5. MEDIA-HACKS MOOC & Community of Practice
Through MEDIA-HACKS, we set out to investigate the prevalence of fake news within our local communities, to gauge citizens’ exposure to fake news, to understand their concerns and map the assets within local communities to support media-related actions and activities. 931 people participated in our community audit process (O1) and the results of this activity, not only provided a robust basis for the development of the project’s outputs, it also established community media teams in each partner country. Building on this widespread consultation process, we created: community media skills training programme (O2), media moderator toolkit (O3), in-service training programme for adult educators (O4), and a dedicated MOOC (O5). Through the project, we supported, educated and encouraged people to think about the information and news that they consume daily, to assess its reliability and validity, and instil in them the skills to create and produce their own news that was ethical, reliable, and trustworthy. We achieved this by engaging citizens under a community media banner intent on promoting real news about their local community, empowering communities to take back control of their news feeds, and lessening the impact of ‘fake news’.
Erasmus+ gave the project consortium the opportunity to address the issue of disinformation and fake news, using asset-based community development principles, to develop citizens' media literacy skills. We were keenly aware of how disinformation can influence the way we think, how we vote, and what we believe and the growing importance of the issue in Europe. By creating a suite of media literacy resources, we aimed to support media consumers across Europe to develop their media literacy so that they could critically evaluate the source of information and cull the spread of fake news. For us, it was important that citizens were not only informed about disinformation but were supported to act ethically and empowered to create reliable media content themselves. We wanted to give the citizens within our local communities the resources to do this. Through collective experience, the project partners knew that the best results have always been achieved when people are given responsibility and held accountable for their actions. By creating reliable media content creators, MEDIA-HACKS aimed to build a network of resilient local communities that were committed to producing reliable and verified media content and combatting fake news.