Civic Resilience Course for students

“I’ll just watch one more and go to bed” is probably a common thought of somebody who is about to fall into a YouTube rabbit hole of recommended videos. However, watching whatever pops up on the screen with no selection might bring consequences more serious than red eyes in the morning. In search of a solution to increase media literacy, DebunkEU.org strives to equip university students with all skills necessary to navigate contemporary information landscape in just 90 minutes with a fully digital “Civic Resilience Course”.

The impact of false and misleading information is being felt now more than ever. TikToks containing misinformation about COVID-19 are being watched by young children, seemingly harmless memes are being used to manipulate voters and might even lead to physical action – such as the Capitol Riot in the United States.

Therefore, to showcase how false information might appear trustworthy at the first glance, real examples from Twitter, Instagram and YouTube will be dissected in the course.

Within the course curriculum we will try to explain, why you might see what you see on your social media news feed, how to avoid falling into a YouTube rabbit hole, and how to discern a real social media profile from a complete troll. Moreover, we showcase that an aesthetically pleasing design and a .org domain do not necessarily mean that this website is reliable.

In order to assess the impact made by this project, the students will be asked to fill in short surveys before they start the course and right after they finish it. Then, based on the feedback we receive, we are hoping to improve the curriculum and expand in more countries next year.

The CRC course curriculum was developed by Colgate University associate professor, Dr. Valerie Ona Morkevičius, Vilnius University associate professors Dr. Viktor Denisenko and Fabio Belafatti together with DebunkEU.org team of disinformation analysts.