In July we hosted the first round of train the trainers’ sessions with our volunteers in Bologna.
It was interesting in many ways. They had the opportunity to share their different approaches when reading news and we felt enriched by interacting with them, discovering different points of view (mostly age-based) and collecting useful inputs to understand what misinformation means to us and how it affects our daily life, especially in decision-making processes.
We went through a first phase of scanning, listening to their doubts and questions. The main concern of the volunteers was about dealing with online scams and how to develop a conscious way of reading news about healthcare. They highlighted how Covid19 spread misinformation about healthcare, and how tricky it is to deal with conflicting news about vaccines, etc.
After that, we worked on a practical session together, where participants were able to apply fact-checking techniques to experience lateral reading and fact-checking itself.
The variety of inputs and the combination of a theorical and practical approach were key to help participants better understand how to apply fact-checking in their daily lives and be willing to teach them to their peers.