STORYMAPS: Fake news & us

StoryMaps

STORYMAPS are innovative pedagogical methods built to tell stories through interactive maps.

Our tool is a collection of stories pinned on an interactive and intuitive map of Europe, that reveal stories from young people who have been confronted with false information. They tell how they reacted and how it made them feel.

Its pedagogical use is very important as it guides towards solutions by giving examples of expert organisations in Italy, France, Slovenia and Spain, able to provide further information or support to users.

Storymaps is divided into three chapters and helps users of all ages to understand how false information spread in Europe, encourages discovery and learning, as well as in-depth understanding of these important subjects. Finally, it suggests ways to act and stop contributing to the problem.

Technology

ArcGIS Online - Survey123 is a platform to create geoinformed surveys and conceived to crowdsource voluntary information. ArcGIS Online - Storymaps is a storytelling platform used to create interactive maps and infographics.

Storymaps are user- and exploration-friendly.

The STORYMAPS tool is accessible to education and teaching professionals, parents and young people who are curious to learn more about how false information spread in Europe. It encourages learning through lived experiences examples, as told by young people and collected during our MAPPING survey program conducted in 2021.

Maps and thematic infographics illustrate the differences and shared aspects between studied countries, and allow for a dynamic and interactive learning process.

We hope to give adults and young people keys to fight against false information in their daily lives, with basic knowledge and understanding of false information spread and its consequences.

We sought to answer the following questions:

Are young European regularly exposed to false or misleading information?

Are they able to differentiate between reliable and false information?

Do false information influence young people's mental health and behaviour?

Can young people act against false information and if yes,

how?

Technical
objectives

MAPPING: Collecting examples of false infor-
mation as they were experienced by young
people and have young people describe their emotional and
behavioral reactions to them in countries implicated in the
Boomering project and the research program
STORYMAPS: Raise awareness on the problem of false information spread at a personal and collective level

Learning objectives

Identify false information examples as encountered and told by young people in studied countries
Illustrate how false information influences the ways young people behave and think
Encourage young people to think and to act when confronted with these issues

Writing StoryMaps

Data collected thanks to the MAPPING platform and research program were used to identify and select examples of lived experiences of disinformation as told by young people

Infographics and maps

The Youth 2021 and Eurobarometer survey results
Eurostat studies on NEETs and Covid-19 death rates in Europe
The international ranking on freedom of press according to Reporters Without Borders (unavailable website)
Varied resources on specific themes and subjects like Covid-19 vaccines and corruption
Resources to identify false information : IFLA & EAVI

Illustrations

Photos are original creations (Marko Krevs) or come from online photo libraries Infogram and Pexels

StoryMaps and Mapping were developed by a pluriprofessional team of researchers from the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Geography of the University of Slovenia. Their areas of expertise include pedagogy, teaching, geography.

All partner organisation contributed to conceiving and disseminating the Mapping questionnaire in their country.

Coordination

Katja Jeznik - University lecturer, pedagogy expert

Marko Krevs - University lecturer, geoinformatics expert

Zala Gruden - Pedagogy expert

Nejc Bobovnik - Geographer, geoinformatics expert

Patricija Čarmernik - Researcher, pedagogy expert

Žan Lep - Psychologist, researcher

The Storymaps tool is divided into three chapters. Users can freely and intuitively navigate from one chapter to the other in the order that best suits them, in order to discover and build their own learning experience.

Introduction to disinformation.

Fake news are just one type of false information. Read through examples and with the help of pedagogical resources, try to understand how we contribute to the spread of false information when we share content online.

Learn new knowledge.

In this chapter, we have built completary resources to help you understand the consequences of fake news on youth. This connection can help you broaden your perspectives and hypothesize on how fake news emerge and how young people come to encounter them. You can discover three types of resources:

Examples of false information collected through our Mapping study
Infographics comparing studied countries
Thematic maps with contextual elements and user-friendly interactions

Examples presented in this chapter were collected in each of the partner countries. We have used a MAPPING tool, a platform to create and disseminate geoinformed surveys and questionnaires.

Get involved in the fight against fake news.

This last chapter is a call to action. We give you advice and keys to contribute in the fight against disinformation. Our favourite way to act is to spread awareness about the problem of false information spread and their consequences, in light of what you have learnt using Storymaps.

Ljubljana

In Septembre 2022, partners met during the third transnational meeting.

We were able to discover the city of Ljubljana, well-known for its dynamic student community and its rich green scenery.