Youth Workers from Belgium about Training Course "Post Truth"
Interview of Adrien Schallier after the Training Course.
Can you give us your opinion about the project “Post-truth“? What is the most important thing you have learned during the training?
I’ve always been interested by communication, politics, social constructs, and new technologies. For me, this project was really great because it succeeded to talk about those subjects in the scope of the current conflicts and political events. We had two different trainers, and both were great in teaching us and making us involved in the topics and the classes. As it was my first project, I was scared that we would be seating for many hours without much interactions. I was amazed to discover that it was in fact the exact contrary, and that we had many opportunities to act, to speak, and to create to learn, all together.
In your opinion, how can young people deal with propaganda, misinformation and fake news? Do you have your own tips?
I would say the young generation has more abilities to avoid fake news than our parents because we were born within the internet era, we know its functioning better. Fake News always existed, obviously. But currently it’s based on social medias a lot, and to know its codes is already a good way of spotting suspicious news. There are ways of finding out they might not be true; either there is no sources, or the writer and the websites are unknown (or they have an history of spreading false facts). There are websites that can help you checking out if the news are true or not. Finally, trying to find the informations on other sources is a must. My tip would be to multiply the information’s sources, and if possible to read them in different languages, from different countries, to get other perspectives.
How do you plan to share and use your knowledge in your local community?
I’ve been talking about our project and Copernicus Berlin a lot around me. I also presented the results of training course "Post Truth" to many friends and colleagues, and some of them are really interested to learn more about the topic of fake news. Therefore I am going to organize several interactive workshops to teach about fake news as well as present Erasmus+ opportunities.