Election period has initiatives to combat fake news

With the start of electoral propaganda for the 2018 elections, last Thursday (16), the volume of information, facts and rumors circulating on the web and social networks also increased. Therefore, concerned about the strength of fake news, the so-called fake news, several organizations this year have dedicated themselves to combating this practice.

An example of this is the recently launched ComProva project, which brings together journalists from 24 different communication vehicles in the country to check information during the electoral period and receive questions via Whatsapp. The public authorities, on the other hand, mobilized with the Federal Police and the Regional Electoral Court of Pernambuco, for example, where they set up exclusive teams to investigate and combat such fake news.

The phenomenon of fake news is not new, but it was enhanced with the popularization of the internet, as pointed out by professor Guilherme Carvalho, coordinator of the Journalism course at the Centro Universitário Internacional Uninter "False news has existed since journalism was created. The mass communication process is no longer a monopoly of the big media, since the common citizen can also transmit content".

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In 2016, during the election race that elected Donald Trump in the United States, there was a "boom" of fake news. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in the US pre-election period found that 64% of US adults believed that fake news was confusing the population about basic facts.

no rumors

In the fight against fake news, Carvalho says that the greatest responsibility lies with journalists, who must value the quality of their work, but other entities are responsible, such as media companies, public authorities and civil society organizations. "We have to work together", he emphasizes.

The professor suggests that readers look for the source of the information to differentiate a fake news from the real, in addition to comparing the same news on various websites or journalistic vehicles and asking themselves about who is disseminating this information and for what purpose? "Spanish, unfortunately, is not educated to think about the media. It is a learning process", said Carvalho. The public can also access reliable fact-checking websites.