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At night all cats are gray? Results of the panel discussion «Fake-epidemic: all shades of gray»
Under conditions when the information space is becoming less objective and more aggressive, it is very difficult not to become a victim of fake epidemic. Ways to develop immunity to the virus of information omnivorousity participants discussed within panel «Fake-epidemic: how to distinguish shades of gray» at the XII International PR-festival. Discussion was moderated by Vice President of Ukrainian PR-League Elena Derevianko.
The first participant was panel pranker Vovan222 – Russian mega popular master of prank calls, which over the past two years has gained recognition of Internet audience throughout CIS. Communication took place via Skype. Pranker in a few words explained what is the essence of the «genre», in which he works, noting that went beyond the usual prank call, turning the game into a journalistic investigation. «I'm doing a bit more. I translated it into the sphere of journalism, and now I'm doing real investigative journalism in the form of a prank... The first pranks were football ones. Among politicians the first «victim» was Natalie Korolevska, former Minister of Social Policy. Then was Tymoshenko's daughter. Well, and the famous one including a scandalous in Russian as well deputy Oleg Lyashko. I somehow «drown» into this topic, followed the events of political life in Ukraine. Because you have it of course is 100 times more saturated than we, and even before those events that occurred in the winter. And I can say that, of course, freedom of speech is much better here, and, consequently, there are more interesting characters.»
At the request of a moderator Vovan focused on in more detail at some of the stories, and including his phone conversations with representatives of the «Right sector», which resulted in its time a big agiotage in the Internet environment and displeasure within the organization mentioned. In particular, this year PR-festival participant, the head of the information department of the RS Borislav Bereza, did not fail to disprove the story of the «slave trade», which became public due to pranker. He also stressed that «the Right sector» – the most open organization in Ukraine and as proof he promised Vovan an interview with the leader of the RS Dmitry Jarosh.
Responding to a question of the moderator, where he sees the border between innocent raffle and destructive manipulation Vovan said, «I do not do destructive manipulation as such. Often the heroes show themselves from the negative side. Here everything depends on them. I do not do fakes. Fakes fairly easy to distinguish actually. For example, in light of recent events in Ukraine and between Ukraine and Russia. It is obvious that there is an information war, and that not every video is true. And the man who somehow thinks and draws conclusions will see the difference.»
The main part of a panel discussion on the fake, opened a co-founder of the Internet project «Fake Control» Mikhail Bortnik and project editor Elena Bulygina. «We are accepting the people links to all sorts of dubious information, and make every effort to expose them in a clear, accessible and simple manner» – so outlined the project Elena Bulygina. The guests presented to the audience a presentation that covered questions on how «Fake Control» was created, what tools the team uses in its work, and brought many examples of fakes, which they had to deal with. Mikhail Bortnik in turn, shared methods of identification information. «The most important criterion of non-fake news – is having a confirmation from an official source, – he said. – Sooner or later (literally within an hour, if the news is not fake) confirmation appears from official sources. These are original photos and videos which are not isolated from the news. It is important because there have been several cases where the article was illustrated with photographs, say, of 2010, from other countries. The next step – is the personal contacts, calling, checking. Usually this appears to be very rarely, as a rebuttal is found at the previous stages. Very rarely we use close personal relations. Expert criterion, in fact.»
The next panel participant, Editor of Kharkov portal City DoZor Rostislav Kasyanenko analysed in detail several groups of fakes and popular tools used by their creators. The most common were the manipulation with dates, misinterpretation of historical facts and distorted information in a humorous context.
Developing the theme of fake tools, raised by Kasyanenko, panel moderator Elena Derevianko noted that sometimes such «activities» may not be for the detriment but for benefit. Since the main problem of fake campaigns organizers and trolling is a misunderstanding of the real motivations of the person being affected. What actually harms him, and what plays into the hands.
Their perspectives on the problem of identifying fakes also expressed the third panelist, Zahar Chistyakov (agency of conflict PR «PR and Z»): «First of all, it's the prime source. The second – when the same sentences match with those that have ones occurred in the history. And the third – if there is a too strong response on questionable material in the form of comments,» – he noted.
Panel finale became an improvised blitz, in which participants responded to a question of a moderator whether to educate consumers of information so that they can more easily distinguish objective information from the fake.
Bulygina Elena: «Yes, of course. In fact, the whole our project is about it. I think even if people may believe the news of such kind, that is no reason to keep him for an idiot. So we write in every post: we have no conclusions, make them yourself, learn to use Google, you can search images, that's a tool, or such a tool, etc. Hope that we have helped someone.»
Zahar Chistyakov: «I have a feeling that our social networks and blogs have begun to conduct fairly active struggle with the fake accounts. As for the fake news, I think society is gradually developing other channels of information. In the past year – we evaluated together with their Russian counterparts – the fake news percentage was about 70%. Now the credibility of the media considering not ordinary people, but people who understand the situation in the country, amounts to almost zero. And the situation still is not managed to change, for many reasons. Therefore, to teach the audience media literacy is important and necessary.»