Section EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

THE USE OF CRITICAL THINKING AGAINST FAKE

NEWS

PhD Candidate, Alexandra-Niculina Babii

Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania

ABSTRACT

The digital era has determined a very easy creation and propagation of fake
news. As a consequence, it has become harder for people to fight this malicious
phenomenon. However, the only weapon that can have results in this
informational war is critical thinking. But who should use it? The creators of fake
news that do this for different reasons? The social platforms that allow the
circulation of fake news with ease? Mass media which does not always verify
with much attention and rigour the information they spread? The Governments
that should apply legal sanctions? Or the consumer that receives all the fake news,
him being the final target? Even if critical thinking would be useful for every actor
on fake news’ stage, the one who needs it the most is the consumer. This comes
together with the big responsibility placed on his shoulders. Even if others are
creating and spreading disinformation, the consumer must be aware and be careful
with the information he encounters on a daily basis. He should use his reasoning
and he should not believe everything just because it is on the Internet. How can
he do that?

Critical thinking seems to be a quite difficult tool to use, especially for non-
specialized individuals. This paper’s aim is to propose a simplified model of
critical thinking that can contribute to detecting fake news with the help of
people’s self judgement. The model is based on theories from Informal Logic
considering the structure of arguments and on Critical Discourse Analysis theories
concerning the patterns found in the content of the information.
Keywords: critical thinking; fake news; disinformation; misinformation

INTRODUCTION

With a simple click on the Internet we are overwhelmed with loads of

information of which a big part is fake. We can identify some fake news just by
reading the title, but it is quite difficult to distinguish other fake news because the
truth and the lie are very well sewn together. Fighting fake news is not easy,
especially because the weapons we have are slower and more focused on reason
whereas fake news spreads incredibly fast and aims for emotions. However,
critical thinking seems to be the only way people can use to try to diminish the
effects of disinformation campaigns.

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The fake news phenomenon is not new, even if its name started to be heard
more often since 2016 US presidential elections. Disinformation has hundreds of
years of history, one of the most recent being in soviet Russia. The implications
of fake news have always been complex and harmful, but today they are amplified
by social platforms which allow the access of targeted messages for targeted
audiences. This phenomenon uses cognitive biases in a systematic way that
influences the reasoning of the individuals [1].

FAKE NEWS ACTORS

In order to understand who is guilty for it and who needs critical thinking,
firstly, this paper reviews the most important actors involved in fake news
phenomenon.

Creators of fake news. They are the first to be considered since they are the
source of fake news, but it is quite difficult to detect them since they use quite
refined technology. However, there are two main identified reasons for which they
are creating disinformation. Firstly, it is real that there are some very well
constructed strategies of fake news, with political ground, which have the purpose
to transmit certain ideologies. Even if it is old, but always updated, propaganda is
one of the first scope of this phenomenon. Nowadays, computational propaganda
uses algorithms, automated techniques and human resources for transmitting
deceiving messages [2]. Another reason for creating fake news is the financial
one. On one side, the digital ads make money by the number of clicks from users
and they use often clickbait titles with this scope. On the other side, they are
entities that offer services of creating from scratch entire campaigns of fake news
which can cost up to 400.000 dollars [3].

Platforms of propagation. Social platforms are a favorable environment for

the propagation of fake news. The well-known effect of echo chamber determines
users to consume and to produce the same kind of content. The individuals tend
to favor the information they see more often and this repeated exposure of the
ideas can determine positive opinions, even on fake news [4]. Social media is also
the environment where the digital robots can help at spreading and multiplying
the fake news at a very high speed. For a long period of time, the platforms did
not manage quite well the propagation of fake news. Lately, after the Cambridge
Analytica scandal, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks introduced
different automated systems of detecting fake news. The most recent initiative
comes from Twitter who introduced the question `Do you really want to share this
content you haven’t read? `. This new option aims to decrease the large number
of people who read just the title of an article and then share it [5].

Mass Media. This entity should be a trustful one, it should have only real
news from verified sources, but unfortunately this is not the reality. We are in an
era where journalists have to produce news at a fast pace which leads to a poor
verification of the information. People are led by instant gratification and this

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allows to situations in which even Mass Media spreads fake news. For example,
at the middle of June 2020, there was a news spread all over the main official
news websites (in Romania, but not only). This news was stating that the
coronavirus pandemic is a false alarm. The source of the news was an international
website (Global Research.ca) which was stating that this was found in a report of
the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Germany. The news has proven fake since this
was an opinion of an employee of the Ministry, in a department with no
connection to the pandemic problem which intentionally wrote the name of the
Ministry in the header of the document [6]. This is a big problem because the
credibility of Mass Media institutions decreases and the public does not know
what to believe and who to believe and this state of confusion is perfect for fake
news.

The Governments. The involvement of the governments is needed

especially from the point of view of legislation. They can prevent and sanction
the creation and propagation of fake news. Some states are quite harsh wereas
some states just proposed recommendations. For example, the Singapore officials
imposed fines up to 47.000 dollars or even jail time for creating and sharing false
and fake news [7]. However, even if it is good that the governments apply
legislation for misinformation and disinformation, it becomes quite dangerous if
the governments have a big control and they get to decide what is the truth.

The Consumer. The target of this phenomenon is the population, the

consumer who lays on the couch, it scrolls through Social Media and he sees on
Facebook that a friend shared a news about the fact that coronavirus is false and
that wearing masks will make us slaves. Triggered by the title, the user shares the
post on his Facebook wall and in this way, at least other 200 people will see it. Is
the consumer to blame since he is just a victim of disinformation? This paper’s
position considers the consumer being quite guilty. The reader is responsible for
what he will do after he reads this kind of content. It is not acceptable to consume
content without critically assesing it. Firstly because this is a sign of respect for
ourselves, if we are aware of what we are eating, we must be aware of what we
are reading. Secondly, sharing this kind of fake news affects the others and it is
not about personal beliefs anymore. At a macro level, this creates some mental
models in society that are dangerous and far from truth. Gérald Bronner says that
the development of the Internet and social networks did not transform us. It just
augmented what we already have: a collective mediocrity, an intellectual
stinginess, a natural disposition for credulity [8].

Fake news is effective because people lack critical thinking. Having a critical
thinking means being aware of the information we encounter on a daily basis, it
means evaluating this information to see if it is real, if it has good arguments, if it
is not misleading. Critical thinking means rational thinking, it means taking
evidences into considerations, it means looking for other sources. Critical thinking
is also reflective thinking, when the individual assesses his own thinking and
accepts the mistakes and he is willing to correct them.

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The success of fake news is due to a low cognitive potential, due to the fact
that people cannot accept that they are wrong, due to the fact that people are
overwhelmed by the emotions and their reasoning is numb. There are also the
cognitive biases that allow some shortcuts to the brain that can deceive us. How
can critical thinking specifically help combating fake news?

METHODOLOGY

Critical thinking is quite a large concept which developed in many directions:

philosophy, logic, cognitive psychology. Because of its complexity, one single
method of applying critical thinking is not enough. That is why, in the following
part this paper proposes a model of the application of critical thinking concerning
fake news based on contribution from two methods: Informal Logic and Critical
Discourse Analysis.

Informal Logic is itself a method whose purpose is to accept or to reject a

conclusion that draws from an argumentation. Critical thinking literature presents
some common points that can be applied. The starting point is the argument. There
are usually three steps, three actions that must be taken: the identification of the
argument, the analysis of the argument and the evaluation of the argument. In the
case of fake news, these steps are very important and needed to help in truth
identification.

Concerning the first step, the identification of the argument, the argument’s
definitions differ in their complexity, but the main idea is the same. The argument
is a combination of assertions (premises) that support another assertion
(conclusion) [9]. Recognizing an argument means first recognizing these
assertions. A lot of fake news present arguments that seem to be real, but they are
not and these mislead the readers. The next step, the analysis of the argument is
very important. At this stage the argument is broken down and its components are
analyzed in two ways: through schematization where, in short arguments, the
premises and the conclusion are identified by the connectors and then a schemata
is drawn to illustrate the argument; and through standardization that applies for
longer arguments which first need a summarization and then the application of
the method of schematization [10]. The last step is argument’s evaluation which
is related to the kind of support that the premises give to the conclusion. There are
the two types of reasoning: deductive and inductive. Each type has different rules
of validation and they can be applied when checking a news that has the suspicion
of being fake.

Informal Logic also takes into consideration the fallacies or the apparent
arguments. Plenty of fake news present reasoning errors which easily mislead
people who do not have basic knowledge in argumentation. Some fallacies are
quite hard to detect even for the specialized individuals. But, most of the time,
people feel that something does not make sense, that something is not right. Our
mind gives us a signal that it does not usually reason in this way. This is why is

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recommended to always have a list of different types of fallacies that is in our

proximity and try to check them when we are not sure about some arguments.

Fake news is also about the language that it is used to catch attention and to
transmit an intentional wrong conclusion. Critical thinking focuses on defining
concepts, on the careful use of the words, on the clarity of the language and lack
of ambiguity. Language manipulation uses words that trigger intense emotions as
fear or anger. As a critical thinker, the individual must be aware and in control of
his feelings and assess carefully the information.

Fake news use quite often numbers in order to appear more trustful. Critical
thinking literature focuses lately on this topic trying to offer different ways in
which people must be aware of the numbers. When an information has numbers,
it gives a false impression that the information is real, that it is based on evidences,
therefore they should believe it. There are a lot of situation when the numbers are
not representative, when they are from another context or when they are used in
graphics and statistics [11].

The second method which can contribute to the creation of the model of the
application of critical thinking against fake news is Critical Discourse Analysis
(CDA). This method is based on interdisciplinarity using theories from discourse,
epistemology, linguistics, social theories, socio-cognitive theories in order to
integrate a complex analysis of different types of discourses [12]. The fake news
type of discourse can be analyzed based on some concepts from socio-cognitive
perspective of CDA: the context, the mental models and the us and them pattern.

The context can be understood from two points of view. Firstly, the ordinary
meaning of the context tells that it means a set of events that determine a certain
action. At this level, the context is seen as being objective and is seen as creating
the connection between the discourse and the environment where the discourse
appeared. Even this meaning is quite easy to understand, there are a lot of people
that don’t take it into consideration when they make judgements. Especially in
fake news, the public gets easily tricked by the content of an information because
they don’t asses the context that determined the event the information is
presenting.

The second meaning of the context, which is given specifically by CDA

perspective is a subjective context. The context is here a mental representation of
the social structures which are relevant for the creation and the interpretation of
the discourse. This concept is composed out of: an overview of the situation, place
and time, the discourse itself, the participants in the communication act, the
mental models of the participants [13]. Concerning fake news, the context must
be analyzed from both perspectives of the context: subjective and objective at a
micro and macro level.

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The second concept from CDA that can be useful in fake news analysis is
represented by mental models. The mental models are an interface between the
discourse and the society. The creation and the interpretation of the discourse are
made throughout mental representations which help us to create and understand
an image about the world and to face the environment we live in. While we are
receiving a discourse or we are reading a fake news, our thinking calls upon
existent representations which are social constructed to make sense of what we
are reading. The problem is risen when fake news is built on mental
representations that are known by the creators. The other side of the coin regards
that in the same time, people are building mental models based on the big amount
of information they encounter daily, information which can be fake. Most of the
time, the consumers of fake news build their mental models of the events they
read about by activating relevant parts of their knowledge and in this way, they
fill their mental model with the information from the news [14].

The last concept relevant for fake news analysis endorsed by Critical
Discourse Analysis is the binary pattern structure of us and them in the discourse
[13]. Most of the fake news have a common way of representing the world, of
breaking the story apart in two parts: good and evil, us and them. Usually they are
the enemies that want to hurt us and we are the victims. The readers should be
aware that this black and white representation is quite dangerous and this should
be a signal that the news is not quite objective.

THE FAKE NEWS ANALYSIS MODEL

The model proposed in this paper is based on questions that can be carefully
asked when someone encounters a suspicious piece of information. Each question
is drawn from the methodology discussed above. This is a simplified model which
has the essential points that must be addressed by the consumer who wants to find
out if a content is fake news or not. This model can be decomposed in more
detailed parts, with more questions, but its efficiency would decrease. The
individual does not have time to apply a complex schema of analysis.

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Figure 1. Fake news analysis model

CONCLUSIONS

The fake news phenomenon is increasing and its consequences are more and
more dangerous: manipulated voting, people that don’t vaccinate their children,
people that do not wear masks during a pandemic, people that try suspicious
treatments, the hate increasing etc. Disinformation and misinformation harm the
society. Because there are so many parts involved in this, it is hard to fight with
this malicious information virus. However, it is necessary to invest in the
education of the consumers, even if this is a battle on the long run. They are
responsible, but they must be helped.

This model is a short version of analysis. It includes the necessary points that
an individual should look at when facing a suspicious content. The limit of this
model is that critical thinking is a heavy, difficult weapon which is based on
rationality whereas fake news is quite easy to digest, it spreads quickly and it is
based on emotions. The key is practice, the key is repeatedly applying rational
analysis on this kind of news until it becomes a habit, until it becomes almost
automated and, in this way, people will have fewer chances to be manipulated.

AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was co-funded by the European Social Fund, through Operational
Programme Human Capital 2014-2020, project number POCU/380/6/13/123623,
project title <<PhD Students and Postdoctoral Researchers Prepared for the
Labour Market!>>

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