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The Disinformation Games

Your safe space for games and challenges related to misinformation and disinformation!

Case study: Disaster reporting

Every time a disaster happens, an enormous amount of disinformation is disseminated in addition to objective and truthful information. This happens according to recurring patterns. In this case study we investigate what good journalism is, what types of disinformation are disseminated over and over again during disasters, why this happens and how we can recognize this disinformation.

Disaster reporting

Recommended for: higher secondary education students, university students, adult learners

Available building blocks: 5

Tags: disasters, conspiracy theories, disinformation, Notre Dame fire

Here are a few helpful tips and advice from the people on the De Facto team who developed and worked on the case studies:

Difficulty level
All case studies were designed for learners in upper-secondary education, higher education and adult education.

Resources
As each building block of any case study comes with a different mix of resources, the difficulty level can be adjusted by:

  • controlling the mix of resources and taking out more difficult texts (e.g. scientific papers) and replacing them with more easily accessible language in videos or popular blogs;
  • controlling the number of resources to work with in a given training session;
  • allowing learners to search and come up with a selection of resources themselves.

Group size
Feel free to adjust the group size and/or the learning methods to make a case study more relevant to the specific needs of your learners.

Language versions
De Facto’s case studies are a product of multinational cooperation. You will notice that resources vary, sometimes significantly, across the different language versions. Being the common working language of the team, it is the English version of the case studies which is most complete, actual and elaborate. See this for yourself when you are choosing a topic to work on, and compare your own language version with the lead version in English. Feel free to combine resources and methods!

Tools
Check the De Facto’s page dedicated to digital tools which can help an educator to work with the case studies more effectively. Use of ICT tools can make a training session on disinformation more practical and engaging for learners.

Tips for educators

Building block 3. The case of the Notre Dame Fire: the hoaxes and misinformation

When a disaster that affect a large group of people, a community or a country happens, a process of spreading of mis- and disinformation starts immediately. In this block we dig deeper into the way this process started during the Notre Dame fire, what media types and social media were used, who was behind it and where the false content, images, videos came from.

Suggested resources

1. Overview sites of the communication during and after the Notre-Dame fire
https://religionunplugged.com/news/2019/4/16/our-8-takeaways-on-the-notre-dame-fire  [Open from webarchive if link broken/inactive]
https://observers.france24.com/en/20190416-debunked-france-fake-news-notre-dame-fire-paris  [Open from webarchive if link broken/inactive]
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2019/why-fact-checkers-couldnt-contain-misinformation-about-the-notre-dame-fire/  [Open from webarchive if link broken/inactive]

2. False connection and misinterpreted content:
https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/chasing-disaster-risks-fast-furious-or-fake-news  [Open from webarchive if link broken/inactive]
https://observers.france24.com/en/20190416-debunked-france-fake-news-notre-dame-fire-paris  [Open from webarchive if link broken/inactive]

3. Conspiracy theory content:
https://codastory.com/news/islamophobic-fake-news-explodes-after-notre-dame/  [Open from webarchive if link broken/inactive]

4. Hoaxes:
https://glean.info/notre-dame-fire-highlights-problems-of-fighting-fake-news/  [Open from webarchive if link broken/inactive]

5. Ideology-related content:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-election-disinformation/who-burned-notre-dame-brussels-goes-after-fake-news-as-eu-election-nears-idUSKCN1SM0LQ  [Open from webarchive if link broken/inactive]

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes represent the competences which learners are expected to develop as a result of the training intervention:

1. Recall and clarify the process of making and sharing mis- and disinformation during and in the first days after a disaster happened
2. Carry out the process of false facts and accusations to other disaster reporting
3. Clarify and illustrate the types of mis- and disinformation with examples
4. Integrate the De Facto egg-shell model into official and social media reports about the Notre Dame fire
5. Select and use inverse image search applications to detect the origin of images
6. Select and use fact-checking websites
7. Judge information
8. Determine the process of re-using of disinformation

Suggested teaching methods

> Direct instruction: teacher-student interaction: what types of mis- and disinformation do we distinguish
> Group assignment: group assigned searching and reading: students choose 3 types of mis- and disinformation (each group has different types) and search for examples about the Notre Dame fire reporting to illustrate these types
> Individual assignment, problem solving: Look up information about the Notre Dame fire and detect differences between timing, content and kind of journalists when comparing official news sites to social media sites
> Group assignment: group assigned searching and reading group assigned searching and reading: students choose 3 types of mis- and disinformation (each group has different types), look for examples (Notre Dame fire) and link the examples to the Egg-shell model
> Group assignment: group assigned searching and reading:students become a data detective by detecting the process behind disinformation spreading and creation, use of fact checking websites and judge information
> Presentation, oral report: presentations of the findings

Suggested learning activities

> Lecture: defining and understanding the differences between the types of mis- and disinformation

> Jigsaw collaborative information sharing: per groups of max 5 students choose 3 disinformation types (every group must use different types). Link the types to examples of misinformation spread on social media and Internet concerning the Notre Dame Fire. After 30 minutes, all the team are re-mixed: 1 member, called "the expert" stays at the original table with the results of the group activity. The other team members are 1 by 1 going to 1 of the other teams, making sure that every original team member now is sitting in a different team with a different "expert". The expert exchanges his know how and findings with the new group members. They reflect on the findings and bring their own knowledge to the group. This can be repeated only once, or several times.

> Exercises: use inverse image search to detect the origin of images

> Buzz session: Look up information about the Notre Dame fire and detect differences between timing, content and kind of journalists when comparing official news sites to social media sites

> Oral summary: oral summary per group

De Facto pillars

Motivated Cognition: in this building block it becomes clear how spreading hoaxes on the Notre Dame fire has an effect on the perception of the public.

Systemic causality: the real causes of the disaster are not always immediately visible and clear. This building block shows how easily people believe in the hoaxes.

Frames and Framing: this building block shows that, depending on what people want to read and what they want to believe caused the fire, they will read specific hoaxes

Emphasis and Equivalence: It is clear that hoaxes about the Notre Dame fire emphasizes on purpose only certain aspects.

Additional online tools

Mentimeter (or another poll tool)
Presentation software

Warning

You have selected a topic from the Disinformation Games area. Please be advised that this area hosts, or links to, resources that contain misinformation or disinformation. The presence of such materials is to assist in developing and sustaining skills for navigating and detecting disinformation. To achieve this goal – and with clear intent – none of the materials are explicitly marked as true or not true.