What can I still believe?
In one video clip, we see Richard Nixon, the former U.S. President. With a serious expression on his face, he looks straight into the camera and announces that the Apollo 11 moon mission has failed: “Fate has decreed that the men who flew to the moon, on a peaceful mission, will now remain on the moon, resting in peace.” But wait – this can’t be true, can it?
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It’s all fake
The Apollo 11 mission achieved the first successful moon landing. That’s a fact. The video with Nixon is a fake. In fact, it is a “deepfake video.” Deepfake videos are videos in which existing images and voices of people are replaced with images and voices of other people. The technology behind deepfake video has reached a point at which, basically, people can be made to seemingly do or say just about anything. That is how the deepfake video with President Nixon became possible. It was published in 2020, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), on the occasion of the 51st anniversary of the successful moon landing. The MIT researchers published it as a way of showing what deepfake-video technology is now capable of – and of highlighting the negative consequences deepfake videos could have.
The internet abounds with ways of fooling us. To expose deepfakes, fake news, and social bots, we have to do more than simply read the messages they are putting out. We also have to ask, “Who is sending this message?” Is the source reputable?
That said, on the internet it’s not enough to simply be able to tell the difference between “true” and “false”. We also have to navigate the internet, and we need to protect our data. We have to refrain from publishing anything that others might exploit or misuse. And we need to stand up against online hate speech. In short, we need skills that will enable us to benefit from the internet – and not be harmed by it. That is what we mean by “media literacy.”
Fact or fake
The truth always prevails over lies.
Or does it?
Who said the sentence "Beam me up, Scotty"?
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It seems like Captain Kirk spoke these words to Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott a thousand times. But did he? In fact, in the 79 episodes of "Star Trek" (TOS) and eight feature films, none of the actors ever said this line even once. Yet the saying is prevalent – even without a cinematic basis.
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Play againWhat is the "sleeper effect"?
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Sociologists coined the term "sleeper effect" in the 1950s, defining it as the tendency of people to remember the content of a message, but forget its source, after a certain amount of time. That means even when recipients identify fake news as such and find it implausible at first, when they remember the fake news later, they forget that they originally thought it wasn't true. Because they can no longer attribute the information to a source. By the way: the fact that recipients find fake news truer and more plausible after seeing it multiple times is also a known psychological phenomenon: it's known as the "illusory truth effect". To sum up, it all means no one is immune to fake news.
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Play againThe most widespread fake news in 2015 was...
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BuzzFeed News calculated the 50 fake news items that were most shared, liked, and commented on social networks. Fake political news is the clear number one: 49% of user engagement was generated by fake political news; 34% by fake crime stories.
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Play againHow many children and young people say they've been victims of cyberbullying?
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Thirteen percent of children and young people say they've been bullied online at least once.
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Play againWhich statement about social bots is true?
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After the first TV debate, Twitter gave the impression that he won. #TrumpWon was the most popular hashtag. It was later determined that one third of the pro-Trump tweets (and one-fifth of the pro-Hillary tweets) came from social bots. If you look at all of Trump's activities, including likes and retweets, researchers say 80% originated from social bots. The first social bots were intended to help people find their way around social networks. Today they are increasingly being used for manipulation. It used to be easier to identify fake accounts, because they shot off messages at all times of the day and night with inhuman speed, it's now becoming more difficult. Modern social bots have a day/night rhythm and can conduct small talk. They can delay their answers, to make it seem like they're typing or thinking. There is no clear method for identifying bots. Ultimately, it's just a question of logic: how human does the conversation sound? How does the counterpart respond to logical questions?
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Peace, justice, and strong institutionsOur measures in this area are supporting efforts toward the 16th Sustainable Development Goal within the UN’s Agenda 2030.
All aboard
We want everybody to be properly equipped for the digital future. We want everyone to learn how to use and deal with digital media effectively, critically, responsibly and creatively. Here are a few more examples of our commitment to promoting media literacy:
1Teachtoday
Our “Teachtoday” initiative, which has won multiple awards, provides practical, everyday tips and resource materials for children and young people, parents and grandparents, and teaching professionals. It includes a learning toolbox, with over 100 useful learning units, for young people between the ages of 9 and 16.
2SCROLLER
The SCROLLER children’s media magazine is geared specifically to helping children between the ages of nine and twelve improve their media literacy. It presents topics age-appropriately – for example, under the heading “Courage on the Net, for Kids,” it discusses the issue of civil courage online.
3ConnectedKids
The ConnectedKids project, which was founded in 2013 by Magenta Telekom in Austria, is aimed especially at supporting schools that lack digital equipment and resources. With resources such as tablet computers, wireless internet service, digital know-how, and teaching expertise, it helps schools bring the digital future to their classrooms.
4Equal eSports
In 2022, we held the Equal eSports Festival, an event all about diversity, eSports and gaming, for the second year in a row. In keeping with its diversity theme, it included a presentation on “Dealing with hate speech and cyberbullying.” Also, a workshop for parents focused on age-appropriate computer games and offered tips on fostering media literacy.
5ENTER
In 2020, the Slovak Telekom national company launched the ENTER digital education program. On the one hand, the program is designed to get kids excited about technologies and programming. On the other, it is helping seniors improve their skills with smartphones, computers, and digital communications.
