What is the cost of lies? How disinformation and fake news affects our everyday lives

“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all” – these words from the HBO tv series “Chernobyl” perfectly reflect the disorientation produced by disinformation and by an intense flow of fake news that affects politics as well as everyone else’s everyday lives.

 

Disinformation is not a new phenomenon, but it has now reached really worrying dimensions. We are living in the so-called post-truth era, where everything can be true and false at the same time. Social media users – or at least the wiser ones – are worried are concerned about the effects that this intense manipulation of information has on the status of our democracies.

 

In these two years of the MEGA project, the consortium has dedicated its efforts to achieve this goal: to inform as many people as possible – particularly young people – about the effects of misinformation, fake news, especially those towards the European Union, the so-called "Euromyths".

What is MEGA?

“MEGA – Make Europe great again” is a project co -funded by the Erasmus+ Program. The aim of the project is to equip participants with the critical thinking capacities needed to unmask Europhobic myths and enable them to implement an innovative approach for empowering young people to critically analyze Europhobic distortions of the European Union and to learn to act as "European ambassadors", i.e. to convincingly spread realistic images of the EU among their peers. Youth workers also learn how to apply quiz-based learning and create quizzes with and for young people.

MEGA Final Conference

The Final Conference of the project took place online and it involved people from different European countries: it was an important moment of confrontation and information, during which the consortium was able to reap the fruits sown during these two years. Participants were enthusiastic about both of the content of the MEGA training modules - https://mega.dieberater.com/ - and the gamified learning methodology, especially about the creation of dark stories. During the conference, participants also had the opportunity to participate in three different workshops:

• Workshop 1: How to spot and unmask fake news?
• Workshop 2: EU-Myths: Ways to embed the topic in informal learning activities
• Workshop 3: The benefits of quiz-based training and playing the MEGA game (visiting the MEGA platform and playing the quizzes to unmask fake-news on EU, as well as, to work in groups and create dark stories)

 

Another highlight of the conference was the presentation and speech of our special guest, the disinformation expert Mr. Vincent Couronne, Law Professor in Paris and founder of "les Surligneurs", general and political information media supported by the public law research centre Versailles Institutions Publiques (VIP). Mr. Couronne spoke about the dissemination of approximations or even legal errors by public figures, whether voluntary or not, undoubtedly weakens the quality of democratic debate and the damages caused by this new trend towards what some people now call post-truth politics.

 

At the end of these two years, the MEGA consortium is pleased to thank all those who took part in the project activities: the young people and their enthusiasm, the youth workers and their curiosity for the gamified learning approach to be used in their daily activities with the young people, and, in general, all those who showed interest in this project.

We firmly believe in the need to educate to a greater digital well-being, especially the new generations who spend much more time in social media and need to have the necessary tools to exercise their critical thinking. If you want to learn more about the gamified learning approach and the MEGA gamified platform, do not hesitate to email us at: mega@three.p2n.de we will be happy to answer your questions and give you instructions on how to use the platform, the black stories and the escape room games!

Thanks to all!

More Information about MEGA

MEGA project stands for Make Europe Great Again and is a two-year project funded by the Erasmus+ Programme (project number 2019-3-DE04-KA205-018681)

 

Date of project:  01/02/2020 – 31/01/2022

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About MEGA

 

MEGA - Make Europe Great Again is a two-year project funded by the Erasmus+ Programme

 

Project Number 2019-3-DE04-KA205-018681

 

Date of project: 01/02/2020 – 31/01/2022

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