Info or intox on the internet

February 01, 2023

Article last edited on February 26, 2016 by Admin

Info or intox on the internet on the web, how to tell the difference? From primary school.

Give students keys to discern information from “infaux” on the internet; helping them to become responsible cyber-citizens who are not fooled or manipulated: these are the challenges of a media education sequence that I designed and put into practice in a CM2 class in Taninges, Haute Savoie last spring. Result: the children gave their all to this project, the notions of which were within their reach, despite their young age. As proof, the evaluations and reactions of the pupils transcribed in the detailed reports of the eight sessions – of one and a half hours each – with supporting photos and sound recordings, available on the website of the National Education Inspectorate of Cluses, as well as progressions, written traces, exercises and answers See the inspection site.

Recognize “false information” 

To recognize “false information”, it was first necessary to understand what “real” information was. How it is processed, formatted, disseminated. What are the different media. How journalists work. A profession that requires scrupulous work in collecting, verifying, sorting, analyzing and synthesizing facts. To grasp the notions of objectivity and subjectivity, the pupils did role-playing games, invented situations, put themselves in the shoes of reporters. They discovered the importance of confronting the different, often contradictory, points of view of the protagonists involved in an event, as well as the difficulty of being impartial. Distancing and critical thinking are necessary to approach information and form one’s own opinion. A critical mind that must be all the more sharpened to find one’s way in the maze of the web, where anyone can write anything, without being subject to any ethical rules.

Info or intox? 

So, news or intox, how to tell the difference? The layout of real and fake news sites is very similar. By comparing the “ones” of “figaro.fr” and “gorafi.fr”, the children understood how misleading the appearance on the net was. Sometimes the lie is obvious. But not always. Some are tempted by the first piece of information that comes to hand and the result is more than random. A presentation to be made on equality, and the first resource offered by your search engine is the “Equality and Reconciliation” site. For now, search engine robots don’t care about the quality or validity of information. It is up to the Internet user to check.

Information is reliable only if its source is reliable. To ensure its veracity, the students penetrated to the heart of the information by methodically dissecting it: who is the author, on what date, in what media, on what site was it published, the site is he reliable, serious? What event is it about? Where, when, with whom, how, why did it take place?

little detectives

The children turned into little detectives to unmask the hoaxes (false information) circulating on the web by tracking down clues, identifying sources, cross-referencing information and dissecting texts and photos to assess their reliability. They were very proud to know tips, such as clicking on the “About” tab, “Who are we? or “Legal notices” to start their investigation. Or upload a photo to Google Image to find where and when it was posted. The “Directory of Infaux sites” from “L’Express” was a valuable tool in conducting their investigation.

The parody diaries amused the students who had a lot of fun creating one themselves. In “les infaux du Haut Giffre”, they started from a real event – a circus had set up in the village for a few days – and invented an event: a lion had escaped from its cage… The the animal’s trainer, the circus director, the firefighters, the police, the neighborhood were all scrupulously interviewed. When they presented their journals to classmates in other classes, they were flabbergasted to see the credulity of their audience. No one had questioned the veracity of the information read.

Laughter during the sessions, but seriousness was also there to address such serious topics as rumors, racism, xenophobia, conspiracy, distilled on the web. The students did not just conduct research, they also asked questions about the reasons that lead some Internet users to spread lies on the net. Do not harm or injure others, respect others, this is one of the key messages of the sequence, the last two sessions of which were devoted to the rules and safety tips for browsing the internet and social networks. On the Inspection website, you will find a virtual exhibition of posters created by the students to illustrate these recommendations Shock drawings that speak for themselves.

The progression available on the Inspection site is intended for teachers, but it can be used by parents or anyone wishing to acquire the basics to try to make the difference between info and intox on the internet.

Text and file: Rose-Marie Farinella (Teacher at Taninges primary school and ex-journalist)

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