Fake news: what to do against the dictatorship of the dominant thought

Artificial intelligence (AI), just as we are discussing in this issue of the Handelot Times, undoubtedly represents one of the main challenges that our society is called to confront today. It has given rise to an authentic revolution that has pervaded every area of ​our daily life, forcing us to deal with an extraordinary and, at the same time, complex reality.

Reality, what an interesting word. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to circumscribe and develop in a sufficiently exhaustive way topics which, in just a few years, have undergone such an explosion as that of fake news: public opinion, scholars, institutions in fact reserve a lot of interest in the category and the theme has become one of the most debated issues in the world of information and politics. Hence the alarm about fake news that would have adulterated the genuine process of forming ideas by misleading voters.

To this unprecedented attention to the truthfulness of the disseminated contents has been added that of the means of diffusion: the new media, the social networks, h a v e ended up under accusation, stigmatized, for the degree of freedom they leave to their users, as privileged vehicles for the circulation of ‘buffaloes’. State and supranational institutions have responded to the common apprehension by promoting policies to combat disinformation through agreements with large network operators (European Commission) and through laws or interventions by internal regulatory authorities (Germany, France).

Pandemic and Fake News In the pandemic era, then, actions to combat fake news in the health sector have multiplied, with tasks of analysis and monitoring of the information disseminated relating to Covid, also through the involvement of the main search engines and social platforms. There is no doubt that the risks of disinformation should not be underestimated, especially on a delicate topic such as Covid-19, because this causes confusion, influences people to seek illusory treatments, undermines the effectiveness of the strategies implemented by the health authorities.