RightsCon Toronto 2018

Fake news and the onslaught of misinformation is one of the biggest challenges to journalism in the digital age. The impact of Fake News on American politics has been well discussed and documented. In 2016, a research survey by Pew Research Center showed that 23% of American adults have knowingly or unknowingly shared fake news. The phenomena is obviously global – fabricated news items, hoaxes, tampered imagery, shared in particular over social media platforms and spread through digital means are fast polluting the news environment. A study conducted at Stanford University indicates that many students struggle to differentiate between legitimate and biased news sources. In the past year events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as the American president have brought the full scale of this challenge to light. What we are faced with today is not just the onslaught of inaccurate and biased information, but deliberately constructed misinformation that serves a certain narrative. Given the scale of the challenge, corporates like Google and Facebook have also stepped up their own efforts to find models that can help identify and tackle fake news. 

This session will bring together journalists, media personal, civil actors and technolgists in a design thinking workshop, where participants work in small groups to identity specific aspects of the ‘fake news phenomena’ that threaten them the most and them work to design the ideal solutions. In five fast paced sessions, the moderator will guide the workshop participants through the design thinking process, during which participants will explore technological and similar solutions that can help curtail misinformation and allow information consumers to identify fake news. This session is  solution oriented and any workable and effective ideas that emerge from the session will be further explored for development by Media Matters for Democracy.