Preventing disinformation and implementation of media literacy in adolescents through play

Abstract

Teenagers are vulnerable to misinformation, and the introduction of Media and Information Literacy into the Spanish education system is still pending. The urgency to accelerate the implementation of disinformation prevention strategies was evident from the summer of 2020 onwards as a consequence of the intoxication of numerous false news stories resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is in this period when the need for journalism education promoted through digital and media literacy became evident (Sádaba and Salaverría, 2022). This work rescues and analyses proposals for media literacy through games in order to eradicate the problem of misinformation from the base, education. To do so, it uses a qualitative and exploratory methodology in three stages: the first consists of a literature review on the problem; the second, a content analysis of AMI projects for the promotion of digital competence and lifelong learning among students; the third qualitatively evaluates the previous ones on a rubric of its own. The results show concern about misinformation and the growing disaffection of the adolescent population with the media and journalism. At the same time, it highlights the importance of including this 21st-century subject in Spanish educational curricula, which is not yet the case. In this regard, the projects analysed use different methodologies that can serve as examples for the development of teaching programmes and other innovative AMI activities.