NEWSpiracy Tutor Handbook EN

https://newspiracy.eu The project "NEWSpiracy" is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. The content of NEWSpiracy is the sole responsibility of the project partners and neither the European Commission nor the Spanish Service for the Internationalisation of Education (SEPIE) is responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. Project Number: 2022-1-ES01-KA220-HED-000089608 when they read something that appeals to them and resembles their thoughts, they share it without verifying its authenticity (Alfonso, 2020). Real examples In 2017 the word "fake news" was declared word of the year by Collins Dictionary. Its use increased by 365% compared to 2016 due to the political strategy carried out by the US president, Donald Trump (Hunt, 2017). During his campaign, platforms such as the aforementioned published propaganda from Russia in favour of Trump's discourse to influence Americans' thinking (Kaufman, 2018). After his victory in the 2016 US elections, there was a greater awareness of the influence of fake news on the networks and initiatives to uncover lies in communications began to emerge. Fact-cheking, for example, is a journalism practice that responds to the need to contrast press hoaxes by checking publications after the fact and verifying the information presented in speeches made by politicians or relevant people (Herrero et al., 2019). An example of this is the one carried out by the Washington Post, which created a space to verify the claims made by President Donald Trump during the first 100 days of his mandate. It was observed that during the first 33 days, 132 false or misleading statements had been made, referring to issues such as immigration, foreign policy and employment, among others (Magallón-Rosa, 2018). According to several studies, the influence of fake news in the US elections was not an isolated event. According to Chulvi (2018), the acceptance of Brexit in Great Britain and the Colombian rejection of the peace referendum are also possible victims of this movement created on the web, which political parties in nations such as Spain are also taking advantage of, given the influence they have. An example of the latter is the COVID-19's handling of information on the global pandemic. Spanish political parties made use of photographs that did not correspond to the reality of the moment as a representation of the situation that was being experienced with the pandemic, magnifying the existing damage. Unscientific and unverified studies on the management of the pandemic in Spain were also used to claim that the government's handling of the situation was the worst in the world. Other examples include posts that circulated on the web about the origin of the pandemic, blaming world superpowers for using the virus as a manoeuvre to massacre the economy of their opponents, or unscientific home remedies that claimed to be useful to stop COVID, such as injecting disinfectant into the lungs or drinking bleach, according to statements by Donald Trump.