Great participation in the “Desmuntant la informació” event
La Fundación Telefónica and Learn to Check organized the event “Desmuntant la informació: Jornada de Debat i Propostes sobre Educació Mediàtica” last Thursday, June 6, at the Fundación Telefónica Space in Madrid. With nearly 200 attendees, the event was a success, attracting teachers, librarians, fact-checkers, academics, and the general public. The event was supported by the U.S. Embassy in Madrid.
The event offered a series of lectures, a round table, workshops, and inspiring educational experiences. Participants reflected on disinformation and its consequences for democracy, while learning processes and tools to verify information.
Lucas Graves, a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, opened the event with a lecture on the global fact-checking movement. “Fact-checking increases the costs of political lying,” Graves stated, emphasizing the importance of this movement for democracy.
Vitor Tomé, an expert with the Council of Europe and the European Commission, a professor at the Autonomous University of Lisbon, and director of the media education division at Iberifier Plus, closed the event with a lecture on the challenges of media literacy. “Being literate has no limits; we learn every day. We must have solidarity among ourselves and help one another,” Tomé highlighted.
The event also featured a round table moderated by the president of Learn to Check, Nereida Carrillo, under the title “How to Educate Critical Voters in a Complex Context: A Collective Goal.” It brought together reflections and proposals from various stakeholders. Felicidad Campal, a library assistant at the Regional Government of Castile and León and a member of the Spanish Society for Scientific Documentation and Information (SEDIC), emphasized the role of libraries in media and information literacy for society: “The library is a basic and ideal service for learning to verify because it serves the entire citizenry.”
Lucía Gómez, coordinator of Maldita Educa, stressed: “Media education will be essential, but disinformation is a complex problem that requires many solutions.” Nacho Guadix, head of Education and Children’s Digital Rights at UNICEF Spain, addressed the challenges of protecting children in the era of disinformation: “One of the challenges is to find a set of basic agreements, even though it might not seem like the right time for it. A framework of rights for children is necessary, but we also need to listen to them.”
(Photograph by Ricardo Domingo. Courtesy of Fundación Telefónica)
Throughout the event, several practical workshops were held. Among them, Roger Cuartielles from Learn to Check led a workshop on the ethical use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, while Lucía Gómez from Maldita.es presented resources for addressing disinformation in the classroom. Additionally, Alba Millán and Irene Ariza from Colegio Estudio shared media education experiences in secondary schools from the school library. Another training session was led by Carla Pina from Infoveritas, who discussed how to address disinformation in secondary education. Malena Rubio from the Department of Education, Science, and Universities spoke about key competencies, soft skills, and their development through the implementation of innovation programs in classrooms.
The institutional opening was led by Pablo Gonzalo, Global Head of Knowledge and Digital Culture at Fundación Telefónica; Rian Harker Harris, Minister Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid; and Sebastián Huerta, Deputy Director-General of Innovation Programs and Teacher Training at the Community of Madrid.
The event “Desmuntant la informació” was organized by Learn to Check and Fundación Telefónica, with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. The event collaborators included Iberifier Plus, SEDIC, UNICEF Spain, Maldita, Newtral, Infoveritas, and the Faculty of Humanities, Communication, and Documentation at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. The vice president of Learn to Check, Marta Montagut, was the event’s moderator.
