Targeted fake news and disinformation campaigns represent a real threat to our nations: They jeopardize the stability of our economies- they challenge our ability to keep our democracies intact- and they compromise our efforts to protect the environment in the face of the major climate change challenges.
It has long been too easy for the spreaders of misinformation to polarize our societies on vital issues, such as dealing with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Important policy decisions on climate change have been negatively influenced using misinformation and critical future projects have been hindered, such as the modernization of our increasingly congested wireless infrastructure that we depend on for our daily communications and for innovative solutions to climate change.
While all evidence of factual information can be found online, today’s social networks accelerate the spread of misinformation at the expense of unbiased and credible information. We can find legitimate resources through scientific organizations and fact-checking sites, but they are not actively disseminated on the Internet. ReclaimTheFacts is here to fill that void.
Today, the situation has changed. For one thing, misinformation is a recurring topic in the media and the public is aware that you can’t really trust what you read and see unless it comes from a truly reliable source.
However, while we can celebrate this success, depending on gatekeepers, who one hopes are trustworthy, leaves the public vulnerable to misinformation to some extent. What happens if the trusted source changes ownership and misinformation finds its way to the new owner?
The conclusion is that today Media Literacy is critical in order to educate the public about the various techniques and strategies of manipulation so that they can easily discover when they themselves are being exposed to propaganda and misinformation. It is not only essential for the public to know how to evaluate the reliability of any new information, but also to learn and understand the techniques used against them.
Donate every time you read disinformation and the money will be used to pay a fact-checking ad!
