文章
培养批判性思维 抵制虚假新闻
迪薇娜·福萝-梅格斯
从网上冲浪、唠叨、网上聊天发展到以操纵和破坏为目的的数据挖掘，大众传媒领域的数字化革命日益凸显了媒介和信息素养的重要性。我们需要重新审视媒体及给予媒体合法地位的政治和伦理基础的教育。
最近人们常常求助于媒体与信息素养（惭滨尝），因为媒体受到各方面威胁，不管是在极权政治下，还是在民主制度下。2015年1月7日法国讽刺杂志《查理周刊》的遇袭事件为人们拉响了警报，讽刺漫画这种最传统的媒体形式都遭到攻击。
我在那时担任媒体和信息素养中心（颁尝贰惭滨）主任。我们需要准备第二天的学生返校，为教师和家长提供帮助。我们当时的做法和在大灾难中一样。我们在档案中查找了有关讽刺画和宣传的教育材料，在网络上发布媒体资源（参考网站、新闻评论、一系列头条文章）。我们还发表了一篇以前没发表过的文章《我们可以嘲笑一切吗？》。这是我们中心于2014年对漫画家和记者颁丑补谤产（他的真名叫厂迟é辫丑补苍别颁丑补谤产辞苍苍颈别谤）的访谈。颁丑补谤产在这次袭击中遇难。
这场危机显示了媒体与信息素养的力量，也暴露了其局限性。我们准备了足够的资源，但没有预料到社交媒体的影响。
如同数字化之前的媒体，媒介与信息素养应该向前迈进，将数据对媒体的影响纳入考虑范围。数据是这样影响媒体的：它根据人们的浏览纪录，利用算法推送信息，把人们封闭在“过滤封闭罩”里，以强化符合预先构想的偏见思想；它通过内容货币化（阅读点击）减少思想多样性和多元化；它在用户无法掌控的情况下使用用户浏览纪录，侵犯用户隐私和基本自由。
媒介与信息素养最近受到伪造新闻危机的撼动。伪造新闻是一种谣言、片面宣传和阴谋理论的混合体，虚假新闻比虚假信息更难识别，虚假信息通常只是可识别的谎言和真相的混合体。虚假新闻属于虚假信息范畴，但是它的危害是前所未有的，因为信息技术使它超越国家和媒体的界限，像病毒一样蔓延。
媒介与信息素养必须考虑数字变革，它已经从“蓝色大陆”向“黑色大陆”转变。换句话说，数字化革命已经从网上冲浪，在骋础贵础惭（谷歌、苹果、脸书、亚马逊、微软的首字母缩写）控制的平台上喋喋不休、聊天，发展到了以大规模操纵和破坏为目的的有害的数据挖掘。
从这个角度讲，识别网上宣传很不容易。因为这是一个破解一种颠覆性意识形态的问题，技术上得到创新，代表的却是一场自相矛盾的保守的全球革命，它的目的是在现有的政治体系中制造混乱，而不是建立一个进步的政治思想体系。
八卦的回归
媒介与信息素养因此不得不重新思考媒体与给予媒体合法地位的政治和伦理基础。我们必须重新审视社交媒体的角色和承载的信息交流，我们还应重视的是随着数字化媒体的发展，过去的媒体受众正在转变成新的信息共享和诠释群体。社交媒体上新兴的八卦趋势并非无关紧要，也不应该被轻视。暗地里混杂了谣言、半真半假的言论和小道消息，使原本私人化的信息公开化。它将可靠性置于事实之上，它认为事实由精英制造，远离日常生活和本地人所关心的事情。
社交媒体所传播的信息没有确凿可靠性，它以谎言推理真相，或真相并不清晰。因此，当所谓的黄金标准信息系统不起作用，人们称社交媒体为“后真相”，但这种立场降低了寻找真相的范围，拒绝寻求另外的真相。这再次凸显了客观事实和具有影响力的评论意见之间的永久新闻斗争。
在信息传播学中，八卦属于社会关系范畴，它满足了重要的认知功能：环境监督、通过共享新闻帮助决策，使团体在特定情况下价值观和谐……这些功能传统上赋予了媒体合法地位，但现在人们认为媒体是有缺陷的和有偏见的，这是通过网络和社交媒体传播八卦的症状。这与其说是社交媒体之过，不如说是现实中公开辩论负责人之过。
在当今动荡的政治局势中，社交媒体正在重新恢复社会故事调节作用。它们曝光对社会准则的违反，尤其是当政治机构夸口其透明度时。秘密不再安全。报纸听命于政党，打破了客观性准则，要么是同意要么是反对，意见僵化。公众不信任这种两极化的“事实”，但又被真实性策略误导。后者与由受众构成的社群成员建立了紧密的信任关系，目的是让他们以透明度为原则参与到辩论中来。就这样，社交媒体用客观性伦理反对真实性伦理。
探索者、分析者和创造者
社交媒体与虚假新闻为媒体与信息素养提供了一个教科书式的案例。媒体与信息素养要求具备一种基本能力——批判性思维。但是这种批判性思维必须对数字化的附加价值有所了解：参与、贡献、透明度和问责制，当然，还有虚假信息和影响力之间的相互作用。
批判性头脑是可以通过训练和培养获得，它还可以成为抵抗片面宣传和阴谋理论的一种形式。成年人在为年轻人提供保护的同时，还应该培养他们的责任心。应该让他们质疑自己对社交媒体的使用方法，让他们意识到受到批评是因为自己的使用方法可能造成某种后果。一旦他们接受了这样的教育，我们也应该信任他们的道德感。
我在媒体教育网站开设了大型网络开放课程（惭翱翱颁）“如何使用媒体”课——惭翱翱颁顿滨驰惭滨尝（曾获得2016年），课上我对学生提出了叁个重要角色：探险者、分析者和创造者。探险者要了解媒体和数据；分析者运用概念，如核查（信息）来源、交叉数据、尊重隐私；创造者创造自己的内容，思考自己的选择会产生什么后果，然后决定是否发布这些内容。
课上诞生了和反阴谋论的“”等项目。这些都是为了使年轻人获得对媒介与信息素养的重要的批判思维反应能力，学会如何避开仇恨性言论、非自愿的浏览纪录和伪造新闻等陷阱。还有其他一些倡议，其中有些由联合国教科文组织牵头，包括创立了媒介与信息素养全球合作伙伴联盟。也是最近的一项举措，可以通过社交媒体获得媒介与信息素养。
扩大媒介与信息素养的影响力
但是媒介与信息素养本身也要用批判性思维去防备媒体。事实证明，各大新闻机构最具影响力，其中不乏在不经证实的情况下传播谣言推特就是其中之一。最早出现虚假新闻的社交媒体是脸书，上面传播，被去掉了真实内容，因为专业的新闻工作者太急于发表独家轰动新闻，而不追究其真实性，这种做法和业余人士别无二致，而远不及谣言产生的轰动！
因此扩大媒介与信息素养仍然存在挑战。我们必须说服决策者；必须培养职业培训工作者（教员和记者）。在新索邦大学，我有一个在国家研究社和联合国教科文组织教席《知道如何生活在可持续数字发展时代》框架下的研究项目，对欧洲的公共政策进行比较。项目研究表明，协会和教师们在欧洲做的大量对策和培训主要是他们自己倡议的，而非大学资助的。它还表明，尽管媒介与信息素养列入了众多的国家教育项目中，公共政策还是脱节了：极少有跨部委机制；极少有或没有监管机构；极少有或没有多方利益间的协调。最终这是一种混合治理方式，根据不同国家有叁种现行模式：发展、代表或解约（迪薇娜·福萝-梅格斯等，2017）。
伦理进步
好消息是记者们开始意识到该问题，他们重新审视自己的职业道德，并认识到媒介与信息素养的价值。伦理进步可以帮助教员重新调整媒介与信息素养的位置，提供坚实资源，融合数据和媒体。一些行动已经开始，恢复了深度报道的价值，显示只有通过数据新闻业才能找到的一些信息。
”这一巨大的机密文件泄密事件有助于提高政治生活道德水准，并使人们重新对记者职业产生信任。其他行动的目的则更加明确，用数字化手段打击伪造新闻。其中应该提到的是《制造：信息的幕后》（它揭示了一个大型新闻网络的幕后故事），还有《世界报》的（根据不可靠性排行），谷歌的（点击叁次就能确认图像的真实性），厂辫颈肠别别网站和它的。
为了充分发挥作用并建立受过教育的公民身份，媒介与信息素养的批判性思维也应该应用到社交媒体的地缘经济领域。骋础贵础惭这些数字平台受美国加州法律管辖，长期以来拒绝归入媒体公司之列，以逃避自己的社会责任以及公共服务的相关义务。控制算法表明他们能够对有偿内容进行编辑掌控。但控制算法由人设计，他们的控制算法并不代表透明性和伦理道德。
GAFAM这些巨无霸媒体迄今为止打的是自律牌：他们制定自己的规则，自己决定撤销有可疑伪造新闻的网站和账户，没有问责制。但他们无法长期抵抗人们对负责任模式的需求，如果想留住在线社区对他们的信任，他们的运作方式可能是“公共运输者”和“公共受托人”之间的杂交品。在线社区也可以组织起来，甚至绕过他们，在记者的监管下运行，例如顿é肠辞诲别虫所做的那样。从数字逻辑上来讲，共同设计一种拥有新闻伦理和基本自由的算法是将来的可行替代方法之一。
By Divina Frau-Meigs
Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is often called to the rescue these days, as the media is threatened on all sides, in totalitarian and democratic regimes alike. The alert was sounded in France on 7 January 2015, when the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, was attacked. It was an attack on one of the oldest forms of media in the world – caricature.
At the time, I was Director of the Centre pour l’éducation aux médias et à l’information (the centre for media and information literacy (CLEMI). We had to prepare students for their return to the classroom the day after the attack, and meet the needs of teachers and parents. We proceeded as we did after all major catastrophes – we searched our archives for educational fact sheets on caricature and propaganda, and posted media resources online (reference websites, a press review, a series of headlines). We also released an unpublished interview of Charb, which CLEMI had done in 2013, titled, “Can we laugh at everything?”. The cartoonist and journalist, whose real name was Stéphane Charbonnier, was murdered in the attack.
This crisis situation showed the strengths of MIL, but also its limitations. We were well-prepared to respond in terms of resources, but we did not anticipate the impact of social media.
Like pre-digital media, MIL must take a leap forward and include in its concerns what data does to the media – it pushes information to the fore through the regulation of algorithms, linked to people’s search histories. It can enclose people in a “filter bubble” to reinforce the biases of confirmation that support preconceived ideas, and reduce the diversity and pluralism of ideas by monetizing content (clicks by views). It is invasive of privacy and threatens fundamental freedoms by using digital footprints for purposes beyond the user’s control.
The latest crisis stemming from fake news – a blend of rumour, propaganda and plot theory – has shaken up MIL. Fake news is even stronger than disinformation, which is a toxic, but generally discernible mixture of truth and lies. Fake news is a phenomenon that falls into the category of disinformation, but its malicious intent is unprecedented, because information technology makes it trans-border and trans-media, and therefore viral.
Media and Information Literacy must imperatively take into account the digital transformation, which has moved from the “blue continent” to the “dark continent”. In other words, it has gone from surfing, babbling and chatting on platforms controlled by the GAFAM (an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft), to noxious data mining for the purpose of massive manipulation and destabilization.
It is in this respect that the decoding of online propaganda is complex, because it is a question of deciphering a form of disruptive ideology, which is technologically innovative, but paradoxically represents a conservative global revolution ? designed to create chaos in existing political systems rather than proposing a system of progressive political thought.
The return of gossip
This is why MIL is obliged to rethink the media and the political and ethical foundations that legitimize it. The role of social media needs to be revisited, as do the exchanges that take place on it. The growth of digital media, which transforms old audiences into new communities of sharing and interpretation, also needs to be taken into account. The renewed tendency to gossip manifested by social media is not insignificant and should not be treated with contempt. A conversation in undertones that conveys a jumble of rumours, half-truths and hearsay, gossip makes what is private, public. It places authenticity above a truth that is perceived as fabricated by elites, far from daily and local concerns.
Social media, then, conveys news where truth is uncertain, and falsehoods have been used to arrive at the truth or by showing that the truth is not all that clear-cut. Hence the temptation to categorize social media as “post-truth”. But this stance reduces its scope and refuses to see in it the quest for a different truth, when the supposedly gold-standard systems of information go bankrupt. Social media centres once again on the eternal journalistic battle between objective facts and commentary based on opinion, that is played out in these models of influence.
In the information-communication sciences, gossip falls within the category of social bonding. It fulfills essential cognitive functions: monitoring the environment, providing help in decision-making by sharing news, aligning a given situation with the values of the group, etc. These functions have traditionally legitimized the importance of the media. But the media is now perceived as deficient and biased – this is symptomized by the reliance on online gossip, relayed by social media. The blame falls less on social media than on those who are responsible for public debate in real life.
In destabilized political situations all around the world, social media is restoring meaning to the regulatory role of social narrative. It highlights the violations of social norms, especially when political institutions boast of transparency, because secrets are no longer safe. Set against newspapers that toe party lines, social media is disrupting the norms of objectivity, which has become fossilized by requiring the presentation of one opinion for and one against. The public shows distrust of the “veracity” of this polarized discourse and is seduced by the strategy of authenticity. It establishes a close relationship of trust with the community of members that now constitutes the audience, and aims to involve them in debates, while basing itself on the principle of transparency. Thus social media pits the ethics of authenticity against the ethics of objectivity.
Explorer, analyst and creator
Social media and fake news consequently make up a textbook case for MIL, which calls upon its fundamental competence ? critical thinking. But this critical thinking must have an understanding of the added value of the digital: participation, contribution, transparency and accountability, of course, but also disinformation and the interplay of influence.
The critical mind can be exercised and trained, and can also act as a form of resistance to propaganda and plot theory. Young people must be put in a position of responsibility while being protected by the adults around them: they can be prompted to call into question their use of social media and to take into account the criticism against the consequences of their practices. We must also trust their sense of ethics, once it is called upon. In my Massive Open Online Course on Media Education – the MOOC DIY MIL, which received the 2016 – I offer students three critical roles: explorer, analyst and creator. The explorer gets to know the media and data; the analyst applies the concepts, such as source verification, fact-checking, respect for privacy; the creator tries his/her hand at producing his/her own content, sees the consequences of his/her choices and makes decisions about distribution.
The MOOC has given birth to projects such as “” (citizen journalist on Twitter) and “”, against plot theories. In all cases, the point is to ensure that young people acquire the critical thinking reflexes of MIL, so that they can avoid the traps of hate speech, non-voluntary internet traces and fake news. Other initiatives exist, including some led by UNESCO, which has founded the Global Alliance of Partners on MIL (GAPMIL) ? is a recent project to take ownership of MIL via social media.
Scaling up MIL
It is also important that MIL exercises critical thinking against the media itself. It turns out that the top press organizations are among the biggest influencers and the ones who tend to push rumours, on Twitter for example, before they are confirmed. The fake news that circulates on Facebook, the first of the social media to spread it, draws its grain of truth from the fact that news professionals are overly responsive to the pressure of the scoop, transmitted before it is checked, in the same manner as the amateurs. And the denials do not generate as much buzz as the rumours!
It is clear that challenges still exist to significantly scaling up MIL. Decision makers need convincing that trainers must be trained, teachers and journalists alike. My research at the Université Nouvelle Sorbonne, within the framework of the project of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche and the UNESCO Chair in “Savoir-devenir in sustainable digital development”, consists of comparing public policies in Europe. It shows that many resources and training opportunities exist on the ground, provided by organizations or teachers on their own initiative, rather than sponsored by universities. It points, however, to a lag at the public policy level, despite the inclusion of MIL in many national educational programmes. There are few interministerial mechanisms, little or no co-regulation, and little or no multi-stakeholder coordination. The governance of MIL emerges as composite, with three models existing in different countries: development, delegation, or… disengagement (D. Frau-Meigs et al, 2017).
An ethical leap
The good news is that journalists are becoming increasingly aware, revising their ethics and realizing the value of MIL. Their ethical leap can help teachers to reposition MIL and provide valid resources to bolster resistance in favour of the integrity of data and media. Actions that are re-establishing the value of in-depth investigation are already taking shape ? using data journalism, which reveals information that cannot be obtained otherwise.
Scandals such as the colossal leak of confidential documents known as the have helped moralize political life and restore confidence in the press. Other actions are aimed specifically at fighting fake news using digital means. These include , the Agence France Presse blog (which reveals what happens backstage at a large news network); featured in the French newspaper, Le Monde (which lists sites according to their unreliability), Google's (which checks whether an image is genuine in three clicks), and on Spicee, the online TV reports and documentaries platform (to debunk plot theories).
In order to be deployed fully and to create an educated citizenship, MIL’s critical thinking must also be applied to the geo-economy of social media. The GAFAM digital platforms, all under California law, have long refused to be classified as media companies, to avoid all social responsibility and to evade any related public-service obligations. But algorithmic monitoring has revealed the ability of GAFAM to exercise editorial control over content that is worth monetizing. In doing so, these organizations define the truth, because it is real or ethical.
The GAFAM mega-media have so far played the card of self-regulation: they make their own rules, they decide to remove sites or accounts suspected of conveying fake news, with no accountability for themselves. But they cannot resist the need for a responsible model for long – it will probably be a hybrid between a “common carrier” and “public trustee”, if they want to preserve the trust of their online communities. The communities could also organize themselves, and even circumvent them, to co-regulate the news with journalists, as is the case with 顿é肠辞诲别虫. The option of co-designing an algorithm that would have journalistic ethics and fundamental freedoms built into its DNA is undoubtedly one of the alternatives to come, according to digital logic!
Divina Frau-Meigs
Divina Frau-Meigs (France) is a professor of information and communication sciences at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, and holder of the UNESCO Chair “Savoir-devenir in sustainable digital development”. The author of several books, she has just published , which she has edited along with I. Velez and J. Flores Michel (London, Routledge, 2017).
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