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Among them: Thou shalt not share unverified news; thou shall ask for
sources and evidence; thou shall remember that the internet and social networks
can be manipulated.
Fake news drips drops of poison into our daily web diet and we end up
infected without even realizing it, said Laura Boldrini, the president of the
Italian lower house of Parliament, who has spearheaded the project with the
Italian Ministry of Education.
Its only right to give these kids the possibility to defend themselves from
lies, said Ms. Boldrini, who is left-leaning but not affiliated with any political
party. The initiative will be rolled out in 8,000 high schools across the country
starting on Oct. 31.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/world/europe/italy-fake-news.html?utm_source=Observatorio+de+Innovaci%C3%B3n+Educativa&utm_cam 1/5
25/10/2017 In Italian Schools, Reading, Writing and Recognizing Fake News - The New York Times
Italy, of course, is not alone in trying to find a way to grapple with the global
proliferation of propaganda that has sown public confusion and undermined the
credibility of powerful institutions.
Pope Francis recently announced that he would dedicate his 2018 World
Communications Day address to the topic of fake news, and the United States
Congress is investigating how Russian agents manipulated Facebook and Twitter
to spread false stories and stoke conspiracy theories to sway the 2016 presidential
election.
But ahead of crucial Italian elections early next year, the country has become
an especially fertile ground for digital deceit. Frustrated by economic woes, upset
by a migrant crisis and fed a steady diet of partisan media, many Italians
subscribe to all kinds of conspiracy theories. It is what they call dietrologia, the
belief that there is also always something dietro, or behind, the surface.
The Italian passion for seeing intrigue whether or not it exists around
every corner runs deep, said Alessandro Campi, a professor of political science at
Perugia University. All of this is part of the Italian cultural heritage, he said.
In recent years, this background has helped erode the standing of traditional
political parties while being expertly exploited by political upstarts, insurgents
and outsiders, none more so than the surging Five Star Movement and its
founder, Beppe Grillo.
Id say that the Five Star Movement believes more than any other political
party in conspiracy theories, said Mr. Campi, an editor of Conspiracies and
Plots From Machiavelli to Beppe Grillo.
Its not only a tactic, Mr. Campi said of the movement, which has
succeeded in attracting votes from the left and the right with an ideologically
9 ambiguous form of populism. Its their political SEE
worldview.
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25/10/2017 In Italian Schools, Reading, Writing and Recognizing Fake News - The New York Times
They use the term Great Powers, never specifying who those powers are,
said Mr. Biondo, who has recently written a book, Supernova: How Five Star
Was Killed, with another party defector. It is a mantra.
Ms. Boldrini, sponsor of the new student curriculum, asserts that the web
cannot be forfeited to the fringes, and that the government must teach the next
generation of Italian voters how to defend themselves against falsehoods and
conspiracy theories designed to play on their fears.
She said she had included Google and Facebook in the project in an
acknowledgment that virtual space is where many young Italians live.
Ms. Boldrini also noted that Facebook was contributing by promoting the
initiative through targeted ads to high-school-age users, and she said she hoped
that the program, which aimed to show students how their likes were
monetized and politicized, could become a pilot program for Facebook
throughout Europe.
But some of the Italian course load seems unrealistic. While some tips are
useful, such as keeping an eye out for parody URLs, students are also called upon
to reach out to experts to verify news stories, essentially asking the students to re-
report articles.
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25/10/2017 In Italian Schools, Reading, Writing and Recognizing Fake News - The New York Times
For months here, conspiracy theorists who reject scientific consensus have
connected vaccinations to medical conditions including autism in children, often
blaming pharmaceutical companies as a dark force behind the medical practice. It
was an issue that struck a nerve in Italy and played right into the wheelhouse of
the Five Star Movements distrust of expertise and authority.
The vaccination opponents were especially strong in the Five Star Movement,
whose leader, Mr. Grillo, once attacked vaccines as a scam by pharmaceutical
companies with the intention of weakening childrens immune systems.
His wildly popular blog has alleged that some vaccines can kill, and
websites, such as La Fucina, run by another party leader, Davide Casaleggio, have
published anti-vaccine reports.
(In the past, other sites associated with Mr. Casaleggio or Mr. Grillo have
also carried sensational reports by Russian-backed news outlets that were
deemed false and damaging to the movements political enemies.)
Its what the pharmaceutical companies do, and its questionable, Paola
Barile, 65, said as she stood with a Five Star Movement flag wrapped around her
shoulders at a protest last week in front of Parliament. The spell has been broken
for us also on vaccines.
At the same rally, Five Star activists screamed shame and railed against the
political parties, right and left, for joining forces to draft a new electoral law they
considered (maybe correctly this time) designed to keep the movement out of
power.
But the Five Star Movement is not the only political force to have profited
from fake news, and students are not the only ones who can be deceived by it.
Last weekend, Gian Marco Centinaio, a senator from the Northern League, a
right-leaning party, acknowledged that he had put on Facebook a post,
subsequently shared 18,000 times, of a picture of a man identified as Ms.
Boldrinis brother, and complained how the news programs dont cover the
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25/10/2017 In Italian Schools, Reading, Writing and Recognizing Fake News - The New York Times
mans no-show job that paid 47,000 euros, or more than $55,000, a month. The
man in the image was not her brother, and none of the allegations were true.
Mr. Centinaio called the post a joke and said, People should be less
credulous.
A healthy dose of skepticism is exactly what the new Italian program hopes
students will adopt.
If people are prepared, educated on digital, Ms. Boldrini said, maybe they
dont fall for it.
A version of this article appears in print on October 19, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with
the headline: Taught in Italy: Reading, Math And Fake News.
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