UNHCR workshop: The editor of 24sata taught elementary school students how to recognize fake news

Editor and journalist 24 hours a day for high school students of 15 elementary schools from all over Croatia Alen Galović he held a lecture and workshop on media literacy. This is the second year in a row that this workshop has been held, which is part of the education programs of the Festival of Tolerance. The program of the Contemporary Jewish Film Festival, in cooperation with UNHCR Croatia and with the support of the City of Zagreb, includes a workshop and a competition in making a video on the topic of positive social integration of refugees with the slogan “Hope is far from home” and education on the positive integration of refugees.

The lecture and workshop on media literacy were aimed at recognizing fake news, and the students were given real examples of fake news from the Croatian media area Galovi. taught how to recognize and how to react to false information that spreads through social networks or fringe news portals. Gaulsć explained why today there is a significantly increased danger and greater presence of fake news reaching us, warning:
“If we are afraid of the unknown, if we have little information and little knowledge about the world that surrounds us, about phenomena, people, nations, then our fears attract false news, we believe in them more easily, even “We want to confirm our fears. Fake news feeds on our fears, and sometimes we refuse to believe that what we are telling is a lie,” said Galovi.

In addition to fake news, Galović talked to the students about artificial intelligence and about the possibilities of misuse or manipulation of tools that use artificial intelligence, using the example he gave earlier dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, dean of the University of Potsdam and former director of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, vividly explained to the students what life in the info-balloon means:
“Imagine that there is a cafe in your town where the coffee is free. Everyone goes there for coffee and all the other cafes in town fail. There is no choice but to go to one place for coffee. But there are microphones on the tables in that cafe , and there are cameras on the walls that record everything you say and do. There are also many sellers in the cafe who listen to everything, they know everything about you and sell you exactly what you want: it happens all the time. and in the online world. Although we seem to have a choice of what to read, the fact is that with every like or opening of some content, we enter the algorithm of what we want to consume in the future, so we shape it to offer us only the content that suits us. This means that we become closed to other types of content and live in an info-bubble”.
Pupils from Primary School Grohote, Šolta, Primary School Klinča Sela, Primary School Centar, Pula, Primary School Augusta Šenoe, Gundinci participated in the lecture. Braća Radić Elementary School, Koprivnica, Mate Lovraka Elementary School, Kutina, Vladimira Nazora Elementary School, Krnica, Ante Curać-Pinjac Elementary School, Žrnovo, Slava Raškaj Ozalj Elementary School, Đalskog Donja Zelina Elementary School and Sveti Petar Orehovec Elementary School, and Zagreb&ccaron of primary schools Horvati, Ivo Andrića, Augusta Šenoa and Marije Jurić Zagorka.