Learn to discern: IREX’s approach to building resilience to manipulative information

• In Event: Roundtable Session 5
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Media and information literacy: building youth resilience to manipulative information

Proposal

Learn to Discern is an approach that recognizes the roots of human vulnerability to disinformation, and builds resilience to manipulative information by equipping individuals with skills to navigate information spaces – both on and offline – in a safe, healthy, responsible, and empathy-driven way. Initially developed in Ukraine in 2015, L2D has since been developed, contextualized, and adapted to over 20 countries around the world. Our theory of change is that if the public gains tools through educational coursework, community training, media campaigns, and online engagement to build critical information engagement skills, then awareness of the dangers of disinformation and demand for skills to resist it is raised, and societies will have a strengthened ability to engage critically with multiple forms of media. The first part of the panel presentation will provide highlights of how L2D builds citizen resilience to disinformation, helps individuals recognize and fight hate speech, counteracts the global public health ‘infodemic,’ supports digital wellness and emotional health, and builds demand for credible information while preparing youth to navigate their digital futures. This work is done in contexts that make the most sense for each community: via formal university curriculum, high school training, peer-to-peer training conducted by youth organizations, social media campaigns, and community engagement training at libraries and community centers.

The presenter will introduce several of the L2D tools for conference participants to experience themselves, including strategies for emotional regulation when engaging with media. Discussion time will be utilized to ascertain how these tools can be contextualized based on academic course or training topics, level and language of instruction, and use in discussions.

Each L2D team builds monitoring, evaluation, and learning into its efforts, and the evidence shows that this approach works. In Ukraine, Learn to Discern imparted a long-lasting ability to recognize disinformation among participants. According to a post-program study, a year and a half after training, participants continued to be 25 percent more likely to check multiple news sources and 13 percent more likely to discern between disinformation and a piece of objective reporting. Before transitioning to the next presenter, this section will briefly cover how L2D is assessed, high-level results from several country interventions, and several of the challenges and lessons learned in the process.

Author

• Stanley Currier, IREX