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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.57.08.11
How to Cite:
Yevtushenko, O., Kovalova, T., Sadivnychyi, V., Zhylenko, I., & Bondarenko, O. (2022). Overcoming Post-truth Challenges: Is
journalism education successful in Ukraine?. Amazonia Investiga, 11(57), 100-110. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.57.08.11
Overcoming Post-truth Challenges: Is journalism education successful
in Ukraine?
Подолання викликів постправди: чи успішна журналістська освіта в Україні?
Received: October 15, 2022 Accepted: November 5, 2022
Written by:
Olena Yevtushenko33
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7850-1580
Tetiana Kovalova34
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6551-4139
Volodymyr Sadivnychyi35
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4163-8954
Iryna Zhylenko36
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1982-710X
Olena Bondarenko37
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2369-774X
Abstract
The article discusses the response efficiency of
the journalism education system to the post-truth
challenges. The aim of our research is to find out
whether the higher education system of Ukraine
is able to provide the media system with quality
professional staff ready for political
participation, responsibility and upholding
democratic values in the conditions of post-truth
and aggressive external information influence.
The experiment covered three groups: journalism
students with general professional training,
journalism students, who additionally
participated in fact-checking trainings and
economics students, who did not study the basics
of media literacy. The survey results and focus
group discussion proved that the future
journalists show greater confidence in their
skills, but, in fact, they are not able to distinguish
better truth, manipulation and lies than the future
economists All three groups had vague ideas
about these concepts and tend to trust statements
that seem familiar and simple. Fact-checking
trainings do not give students an advantage in
identifying truth and lies in public statements.
33
. Candidate of Sciences in Social Communications, Associate Professor, Senior Training and Development Specialist, NetCracker
Technology Corporation, Kyiv, Ukraine.
34
Candidate of Sciences in Social Communications, Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and
Philology, Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine.
35
Doctor of Sciences in Social Communications, Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and
Philology, Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine.
36
Doctor of Philology, Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and Philology, Sumy State
University, Sumy, Ukraine.
37
Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and Philology, Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine.
Yevtushenko, O., Kovalova, T., Sadivnychyi, V., Zhylenko, I., Bondarenko, O. / Volume 11 - Issue 57: 100-110 / September, 2022
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The results suggest an urgent need to find new
system solutions on the part of higher education,
the community of professionals to train future
journalists ready to work in the post-truth
conditions.
Keywords: post-truth, fact-checking, media
literacy, critical thinking, journalism education.
Introduction
Post-truth challenges are fairly new to the
education system. Although the post-truth era
affects almost all areas of life, it poses
particularly difficult questions for journalists,
who must provide the audience with reliable,
accurate, truthful information. Therefore,
journalism education should provide future
journalists with the tools to work in post-truth
conditions.
Post-truth, as Bufacchi (2021) describes it, “is a
deliberate strategy aimed at creating an
environment where objective facts are less
influential in shaping public opinion, where
theoretical frameworks are undermined in order
to make it impossible for someone to make sense
of a certain event, phenomenon, or experience,
and where scientific truth is delegitimized”. The
main consequence of post-truth is that it undercut
the possibilities of gaining accurate knowledge.
Several interconnected trends lead to this:
1. increasing prevalence and influence of
misinformation and disinformation; 2. increasing
rejection of well-established claims; 3. placing
personal belief and experience above facts and
evidence; 4. declining trust in institutional
providers of information such as journalism and
science; 5. increasing fragmentation and
polarization of information consumption
(Barzilaia & Chinnb, 2020). All these
circumstances lead to the fact that the truth
becomes very difficult to achieve.
Today people mostly perceive reality through the
news. Changes in information distribution
channels and in ways of consuming content “are
affecting the perception of what is true or false in
the news”. (Capilla, 2021, p. 320). Journalists, as
critical mediators of truth (Michailidou & Trenz,
2021), can be those who not only broadcast news
and inform the public, but also help the audience
to overcome the challenges of post-truth: they are
the translators and mediators that ensure the
procedure [for arriving at the truth] is
safeguarded (Michailidou & Trenz, 2021).
Theoretical Framework or Literature Review
In the world of constantly changing technologies,
it is necessary for higher education to return to
the origins – to teach fundamental knowledge. In
post-truth era the tools we are teaching students
today will not help them in practice tomorrow.
Therefore, we should develop in students ability
to reflect, train and promote “autonomy of
reason,” and plan the educational process to
“encourage the culture of intellectual inquiry”
(Bhaskaran, Mishra & Nair, 2019). Students, and
especially future journalists, “need to learn a
much broader array of aims, ideals, and reliable
processes to deal with a complex world rife with
low-quality information and bad evidence”
(Chinn, Barzilai & Duncan, 2021).
As noted by Theodosiadou, Spyridou, Nikos,
Milioni, & Venetia (2021), “journalism students
acknowledge the need for journalists’ increased
responsibility towards their publics”. What can
educators do for this? Barzilaia & Chinnb (2020),
among other strategies, identify the following:
developing civic media and digital literacy
competencies, increasing students' epistemic
vigilance, acknowledging and coordinating
multiple epistemologies.
As the ways to confront main manifestations of
post-truth – alternative facts and fake news –
including that among students, researchers
mostly mention media literacy and the
development of critical thinking (Dell, 2018;
Cooke, 2018; Buckingham, 2019), including
news literacy (Bonnet & Rosenbaum, 2019) and
digital media literacy (Lee, 2018). The need to
develop media-educational technologies is also
advocated by Ukrainian scientists, including
N. A. Tkachova & D. V. Strelchenko (2018),
D. Bachynskyi (2018), N. Gabor (2018). It is
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important, however, that students acquire not
only text analyzing skills, but also an
understanding of the power structures behind the
media, whose interests they serve, and what goals
they have (Barton, 2019). As Hobbs (2017)
notes, “[і]n a post-truth world, media literacy
matters. The future of our democracy depends on
it”.
But media literacy is just one of the mechanisms.
In the case of students studying social studies, the
strategy of discussing political topics throughout
the learning process may also be productive
(Journell, 2017, р. 11). Even if it does not provide
expertise, discussing politics in the classroom
“helps them [students] activate critical thinking
skills and cultivate respect for diverse
interpretations” (Hobbs, 2017). Software
products, such as automatic fake news
recognition systems, can also be used as a means
to counteract the manifestations of post truth
(Pandey, 2018; Kanozia, 2019; Conroy, Rubin &
Chen, 2015). Elements of fact-checking can be
applied even throughout the learning process
among students, who have corresponding
background and mostly study social studies
(Journell, 2017, р. 11). Although fact-checking is
mainly viewed as special techniques used by
journalists to verify public statements, students
can also be introduced to these technologies
during their studies. The goal will not consist in
producing media materials, but only in
developing the ability to critically assess the facts
and select reliable sources.
The aim of our research is to find out whether the
higher education system of Ukraine is able to
provide the media system with quality
professional staff ready for political
participation, responsibility and upholding
democratic values in the conditions of post-truth
and aggressive external information influence.
To this end, based on the materials of the latest
presidential campaign, we aim to test whether the
skills of discerning truth, lies and manipulation,
which are critical and fundamental to a future
journalist, are better developed among
journalism students rather than in those who do
not receive specific media knowledge.
In order to achieve this aim, a number of research
questions need to be answered:
• To what extent do journalism students and
students of other specialties tend to
trust/distrust the public statements made by
the most popular politicians.
• Whether there is a correlation between the
level of trust/distrust and the students’
specialty.
• Whether additional mastery of fact-checking
techniques helps journalism students to
better distinguish between truth,
manipulation and deception.
• What markers and criteria allow future
journalists and students of other specialties
to assess information as truth, manipulation
or lies.
Methodology
The study included two stages. During the first
stage, the participants filled in the questionnaires,
where they had to determine whether a political
statement is true, manipulative or false. At the
second stage, the results were discussed in the
focus group. The aim of this stage was to clarify
the motives of the given responses.
Stage 1. Three groups of students of Sumy State
University were involved in the study:
The first group included 25 participants studying
“Journalism”. It was assumed that these students
are able to distinguish manipulative, fake, false
messages using their knowledge of the
journalism standards, the principles of media
work.
The second group included 25 economics
students. Since some of the quotes in the
questionnaire were related not only to social, but
also to political and economic topics (the terms
like “GDP” or “gross income” were used), it was
assumed that it is economics students, who will
be able to notice manipulation with these
concepts.
The third group consisted of 22 journalism
students, who attended one or more trainings on
fact-checking methodology. Such trainings
within the educational projects at Sumy State
University were conducted by a media expert, a
journalist, a chief editor of the Ukrainian fact-
checking project “Without Lies”. In general,
about 30 participants were trained, but since the
survey was voluntary, only 22 of them took part
in the experiment. It was expected that this group
has the most effective tool for exposing the
manipulative and false news, most of the students
had experience in applying fact-checking
methodology when conducting own investigative
reporting.
The age of all respondents varies from 17 to 23
years (from the first year of bachelor’s degree
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programme to the last year of master’s degree
programme at a Ukrainian university), with
65.3% of participants aged 17-18 (the first or the
second year of bachelor’s degree programme).
The gender distribution is as follows: 22.2 % –
men, 77.8 % – women, which generally
corresponds to the students’ gender composition
of the Departments of Humanities and Social
Studies in Ukraine.
Since the survey was conducted on the day
before the first ballot of the election of the
President of Ukraine, the questionnaires included
statements of politicians who according to the
surveys of three leading Ukrainian sociological
research centres (the Sociological group
“RATING”, Kyiv International Institute of
Sociology, Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives
Foundation) had the highest ratings of voters’
support. It was planned to confine to only five
political figures, but since there were small
differences in the data of opinion polls as to the
4 6th candidates, then it was decided to include
all leaders in the survey (as a result, these
politicians were ranked 1-5th and 7th in the first
round of the presidential elections).
The questionnaire statements were taken from
the portal VoxCheck. This is a leading Ukrainian
resource, which verifies political rhetoric, it is a
signatory of the Poynter Institute Code of Ethics.
VoxCheck team includes scientists, economists,
financial experts, lawyers, most of whom have
European education and job experience in
international companies. The portal works
according to a clear check-out methodology of
political statements verification (strict rules for
statement selection, reliable sources for
verification, each statement at the selection stage
is assessed by several experts, at least two
members of the editorial board must approve a
proposed verdict after the study) (VoxCheck,
n.d.).
VoxCheck uses the following verdicts “True”,
“Technical error”, “Exaggeration”,
“Manipulation”, “False” and also “No verdict”.
In order not to perplex the respondents, only
statements with the experts’ conclusion “Truth”,
“Manipulation” or “False” were included in the
questionnaire. We selected one statement with
different verdicts, which belongs to one of six
politicians (the total number of statements – 18,
respectively). The participants had to assess each
statement choosing one of three proposed
verdicts.
The questionnaire instruction gives the verdicts
criteria used by VoxCheck for the respondents:
• Truth: information is truthful. The data are
presented in the correct context. The given
data may differ from the correct data by 0-
10%.
• Manipulation: information/data are truthful,
but they are presented in a distorted context
or not completely. A speaker tries to
illustrate a false idea.
• False: information or data are not true,
including data that are more/less correct by
>20 %.
All statements were anonymous, the author of a
statement was not specified. While selecting the
quotations that could reveal a politician’s
personality (mentioning a politician’s position,
his previous experience, the names of political
parties or the most famous “brand” phrases) were
excluded. The only way to identify authors that
was not eliminated is the statement language
(two of six politicians are predominantly Russian
speaking, while the rest speak Ukrainian in
public). All quotes were given in the original
language, 4 of them were in Russian, which
could prompt the authorship.
The survey was conducted using a paper
questionnaire. All results are processed using
Google Services and Microsoft Excel.
Stage 2. After processing the survey results, the
focus group was interviewed. All students of the
first stage were invited to participate, about 20 of
them showed the interest. We selected 9 students
to participate in the focus group. The
composition of the focus group was equally
formed: three representatives from each group of
the first stage, taking into account the gender
balance (4 boys and 5 girls) with the maximum
involvement of students of different years of
study (the latter was important because it helped
avoid a situation, when some of the participants
are familiar with each other, while the rest do not
know others and feel less free to express their
thoughts).
The scenario of focus group study supposed a
discussion of the following issues: how the
participants understand the concepts of “truth”,
“manipulation”, “lie”, how comprehensible and
useful the definition of these concepts was in the
questionnaire, is it possible to distinguish these
concepts, how important the personality of the
statements author is to identify if the statement is
true or false. The further discussion concerned
the statements of the politicians (three quotes of
each politician): what criteria were used to
identify the author, does the perception of
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information changes when the name becomes
known.
Results and Discussion
Stage 1. While analysing the survey results, there
was no significant difference in the number of
correct answers given by respondents of different
groups. The highest index – 33.8 % – was shown
by those, who were trained on the methodology
of fact-checking. But the results of the other two
groups differ only by about two per cent (Fig. 1)
which is not representative within the scale of our
sampling. At that, it should be noted that even
when guessing the number of correct answers
should be close to 33% (since each question had
only three possible choices). In fact, none of the
surveyed groups showed the result that would
prove the participants’ ability distinguish
between truthful, manipulative and false political
statements.
Figure 1. The number of correct responses
Source: own authorship
The significant differences are recorded only in
the distribution of respondents’ responses
according to the choices (Fig. 2). The students at
least once trained on fact-checking significantly
less chose the choice “True” (by 13-16 %
compared to two other groups), and more often –
“Manipulation” (by 4-11 %) and “False” (by 4-9
%). The choices of students, who participated in
the trainings distributed the most evenly, while
the other two groups considered the
questionnaire statements to be true in half or
almost half of the cases. The journalism students,
who did not participate in additional trainings,
are least likely to consider the political
statements manipulative (only approximately
one out of four respondents), while in other two
groups, more than one third of respondents chose
this answer.
Figure 2. The distribution of respondents’ responses
Source: own authorship
0,338 0,316 0,311
0
0,1
0,2
0,3
The number of correct reponses
Trained students Journalists Economists
0,345
0,389
0,267
0,502
0,275 0,223
0,478
0,348
0,174
0,1
0,2
0,3
0,4
0,5
0,6
True Manipulation False
The frequency of respondents’ choices
Trained students Journalists Economists
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Despite the fact that the questionnaire statements
were anonymous, i.e. the respondents did not
know the statement author, the analysis showed
a significant difference in the number of correct
responses as to certain politicians (Fig. 3). For
example, the candidate Anatoliy Hrytsenko, who
is a relatively non-media figure, invested less
money in advertising in comparison with other
candidates and the number of false assessments
of his statements exceeds the number of correct
responses by 53.8 % (three quarters of the
respondents were wrong, assessing the
statements of Anatoliy Hrytsenko). But for a
well-known for the audience candidate Yuriy
Boiko, whose rhetoric is confined to pro-Russian
slogans and based on the criticism of the current
government, the index of wrong responses
amounted to only 22.2 %. Among the other
speakers Yuriy Boiko has been characterised by
stable rhetoric for a long time (at least last 15
years), so, probably, it is easier for the audience
to distinguish when the politician tells the truth,
the lies or when he manipulates. The significant
prevalence of false estimates of respondents for
the elected president of Ukraine Volodymyr
Zelenskyi was recorded (at the survey time, the
candidate had announced about his plans to go
into politics only three months earlier and he
almost did not give interviews). Despite the fact
that one of the largest media holdings of the
country openly supported Volodymyr Zelenskyi,
the audience, obviously, did not understand quite
well the political principles of his election
campaign.
Figure 3. The distribution of correct and incorrect respondents’ responses according to the authorship of
political statements
Source: own authorship
A noticeable difference is recorded in the
responses distribution in relation to politicians
(Fig. 4). Regarding the statements of the recently
elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the
respondents most often chose the choice
“Manipulation”and least frequently “True”. The
statements of the well-known and rather odious
politician Oleh Liashko, at that time, an
opposition MP, were evaluated as “True” most
often and “False” least often. The choice “False”
was chosen in relation to the statements of the
incumbent at that time President Petro
Poroshenko. Obviously, such answers of the
respondents can be explained by the confidence
crisis, which developed in Ukraine at that time:
the current President, the Parliament, the Cabinet
of Ministers had the level of confidence below 10
%, while various factions of the opposition were
actively gaining ratings.
23,1 27,3 30,6 35,6 36,6 38,9
-76,9 -72,7 -69,4 -64,4 -63,4 -61,1
-90
-75
-60
-45
-30
-15
0
15
30
45
A. Hrytsenko V. Zelenskyi Yu. Tymoshenko O. Liashko P. Poroshenko Yu. Boiko
The frequency of correct and incorrect responses
(according to the authorship)
Correct responses, % Incorrect responses, % Conditional choice probability
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Figure 4. The distribution of respondents’ responses according to authorship of political statements
Source: own authorship
The fact that the current President Volodymyr
Zelenskyi was not among the leaders in the
respondents’ confidence is obviously due to the
fact that his statements were too ambiguous and
confusing, and, therefore, they were perceived by
more than half of the respondents as
manipulative. It should be noted that Ukraine is
traditionally geographically divided in relation to
political views. Therefore, Volodymyr Zelenskyi
placed stake on avoiding harsh comments for any
region, liberalized them according to his views of
foreign and domestic policy in his campaign, so
he was perceived as “one of their own” in the
East and the West.
Stage 2. During the focus group discussion, the
representatives of two groups of the first stage of
the study noted that they referred to the
definitions of “True”, “Manipulation” and
“False” in the descriptive part of the
questionnaire. So, an economics student noted
that the given criteria are very clear, he took them
into account while responding. The journalism
students noted that they referred to these
definitions, but less often, because they had
already known them before. The respondents
trained on fact-checking pointed out that they did
not refer to the definitions, because they seemed
limited to them, especially the definition of
manipulation. These students considered their
understanding deeper and more complete.
During the focus group, the participants also
discussed their own definitions of concepts.
Among the responses:
• “True”: “something not abstract” (an
economics student); “information is already
verified”, “maybe it is something not 100%
true, but there is great percentage of reliable
information”, “lists specific numbers,
specific people, facts without evaluations”
(journalism students); “this is our basic
knowledge, which we already have”,
“something that sounds adequately, not
absurd, these are pure facts without
emotions” (“fact-checkers” students).
• “Manipulation”: “information is vague,
separate fragments are given” (an economics
student); “it may be true, but to somebody’s
advantage, emotional appeals, information
overload” (a journalism student); “it is rather
a lie”, “we are bombarded with numbers,
emotions” (“fact-checkers” students).
• “False”: “basically it is a mistake, probably,
intentional” (an economics student), “for
example, we are told that certain amount of
money is allocated for the road repair, but, in
fact, there is no road; i.e. a lie is an obvious
phenomenon, what we see with our own
eyes, we know it from the experience”,
“something that causes doubts. If this
happens, the phenomenon should be
analyzed, checked and only then to draw
conclusions. A lot of numbers can just be
erroneous, it does not mean that it is a lie”
(journalism students); “it is information that
is contrary to your knowledge base,
sometimes something absurd” (a “fact-
checker” student).
The respondents’ responses differed dramatically
whether it was easy for them to draw a boundary
0,282
0,509
0,315
0,616
0,269
0,116
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
True Manipulation False
The frequency of respondents’ choices
(according to the authorship)
V. Zelenskyi Yu. Tymoshenko P. Poroshenko
Yu. Boiko A. Hrytsenko O. Liashko
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between True, Manipulation and False while
filling in the questionnaire. Economics students
admitted that the most difficult was to distinguish
the truth, because Ukrainian journalists usually
hide it, they mainly spread fakes and lies (let us
remind that the group of economics students
considered true almost half of questionnaire
statements at the first stage). Journalism students
noted that the boundary is quite easy to draw,
because the concepts are too different, they were
confident enough to be able to correctly identify
the statements. Students trained in fact-checking,
noted that the boundary is quite blurred, what
seems false may be true and vice versa. In
addition, manipulation is somewhere in the
middle between truth and lies, which makes it
even more difficult to find the right answer. At
the same time, one of the group representatives
expressed a very significant opinion: “it seemed
that everything in the questionnaire was false,
because it is better not to believe than to be
caught [on the hook of manipulation and lies]”.
The opinions of the focus group divided
regardless of their speciality regarding the
importance of knowing the statement author to
determine whether it (statement) is true or false.
For example, one economics student, when asked
whether it is important to know the author,
answers: “Yes. If you know who the author is,
you will not choose [his quote as true]” and the
other one has the opposite position: “The author
does not influence me, the numbers are
important”. The journalism students have the
same opinions division: “If I support a politician,
his personality is important, it is very
influential”, “Even if I support a politician, I do
not necessarily trust fully”. Only “fact-checkers”
students were unanimous, their most revealing
explanation is the following statement: “The
author is not important, it is necessary to analyze
irrespective of personalities”.
While discussing the phrases of certain
politicians, all the participants of the focus
groups showed a common point that the
truth/manipulation/lies uttered by Petro
Poroshenko, who was the current president at
that time, were the easiest to identify because,
according to the words of one of the respondents,
“[Poroshenko] bases on the information
favorable for him and the messages well known
to the audience”. It is noteworthy, that during the
discussions in the focus group, the participants
almost unmistakably gave the correct verdicts to
P. Poroshenko’s comments, despite the fact that
in the survey, this index did not differ
significantly from the indices for other
politicians. It is also significant that the
participants immediately identified the author of
the quotes according to the rhetoric subject,
because, according to one of the respondents, “no
one else would say that”.
During the focus group survey, the participants
had the biggest difficulty to distinguish the
truthfulness of the statements of the current
President, who at that time was known as a
comedian and only three months as a politician
Volodymyr Zelenskyi and a long-term
“mediocre” of Ukrainian politics, former
Minister of Defense Anatoliy Hrytsenko.
Participants were able to identify the authorship
of Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s quotations only due to
their Russian language. Most of the respondents
agreed that it is almost impossible to determine
whether a statement is true or false, because they
are all “the same”, “everything seems like
manipulation”, “he is somewhat vague in all
comments”.
Anatoliy Hrytsenko remained the only politician
whose authorship the students were unable to
identify. Obviously, it is due to the fact that the
politician was not active enough in the digital
environment, his main electorate was older
people, for young people his rhetoric is
unfamiliar. At that, regarding the verdicts, the
situation is better as the students easily and
correctly identified the true statement of the
politician (it concerned the army, and the former
Minister of Defense obviously seems an expert
and convincing to the audience) in this topic.
During the discussion the participants, despite
declared criticality, openly showed their biased
attitude towards the politicians several times, for
example: “Tymoshenko is manipulating”,
“Tymoshenko is lying, I don’t believe her”,
“Everything is a lie, Julia cannot be trusted”
(there were no such value judgments as to other
politicians).
In general, while discussing, the participants
mostly defined as true the statements that seemed
“simple”, “[that] are easy to read”, “already
familiar” to them. Manipulative statements were
considered those, which “touches sensitive issues
for society”, it has “no logic”, “a catch is felt”,
“vague wording”, “what kind of value judgments
is it?”. Why the statements seem false, the
students explained as follows: “it does not look
like a manipulation, too”, “a lot of is said, it is
difficult to figure it out”, “this is something
strange”, “everyone knows that it is not so”.
The important thing is that even knowing that
one of the statements is a lie, the participants
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mostly tried to avoid this verdict: the majority
easily made suggestions which of the phrases is
either truth or manipulation, but while answering
the question of the leader of the focus group
(such as: “If A is a true, C is a manipulation, then
Is B a lie?” ), the participants tried to avoid such
a verdict, because “it is necessary to check
everything” (a journalism student ), “it is difficult
to respond not knowing exactly what is written in
NATO statute” (a journalism student), “we are
not familiar with this topic” (a “fact-checker”
student).
During the focus group survey, the students
assessed their knowledge and skills of critical
analysis of information as quite high. At the same
time, the journalism students of two groups
expressed greater confidence. However, in fact,
the representatives of all three groups showed
approximately the same level of understanding of
the issue. Even students having a high level of
media literacy tend to assess the statements
credibility according to the fact whether it is easy
or difficult to perceive, familiar or unfamiliar.
Perhaps journalism students have higher working
culture with information and are able to check
data better, distinguish reliable and unreliable
sources (it was not investigated in our study), but
when they find themselves in the situation of
information consumers, their knowledge and
skills did not help them to be more protected than
others.
The obtained results have proven that Ukrainian
students are generally not completely aware of
true and false political statements. This statement
concerns not only the economics students, who
did not take any media literacy training, but also
the journalism students (including those, who
were additionally trained on fact-checking).
As a consequence, we get approximately the
same results that are described by Bhaskaran,
Mishra & Nair (2019) – the journalism students
do not have a higher level of media literacy than
other students, they tend to trust the first
available results from the Internet, have specific
understanding of such concepts as truth and
objectivity.
At the same time, our results confirmed the thesis
mentioned by Bhaskaran, Mishra & Nair (2019)
that the future journalists are overconfident about
their ability to recognize fakes and lies. This was
explicitly stated by our participants during the
focus group discussions. In fact, their skills were
not better than those of the future economists.
However, the question arises whether trainings
can replace system academic knowledge of the
subject. Our results show that, obviously, not.
Students, who additionally participated in the
training, conducted by the fact-checking resource
editor with many years of practical experience at
extracurricular time, did not show better skills in
distinguishing truth / manipulation /untruth. The
only thing that fact-checking trainings have
given is to doubt everything. Certainly, the
journalist should be critical, but do not the fact-
checking trainings make students even more
perplexed and confused? Do not they contribute
to the fact that students begin to doubt even the
obvious truth, lose hope to form a coordinate
system necessary for orientation in the
information space? The results of our
experiments have proven that students became
suspicious, saw manipulation even where it was
absent, but they still had low ability to
consciously distinguish truth from wrong.
And if to recall the UK poll (Goodfellow, 2017),
according to which “[h]alf of those confident
they could tell the difference between a fake
news story and a real news story were stumped
by at least one of the fake news stories shown”,
then we can come back to already mentioned
issue. Probably, specific and specialized
knowledge gained by students during one-, two-
day trainings only creates the illusion of
“omniscience”, but, in fact, it does not contribute
to a truly profound personal and professional
transformation?
Conclusions
Obviously, knowledge of fact-checking is not
superfluous for future journalists. As a matter of
fact, it is not an adequate response to the
challenges of the post-truth era. But it is
impossible to fight the untruth only with the help
of fact-checking, since the post-truth affects, first
of all, recipient’s emotions, but not his mind.
Therefore, it is possible to counteract it only
through the coordinated actions of all public
institutions.
Instead, one should start with identifying the
cause why students are not ready to think
critically and be objective. Ridgway, Nicholson
& Stern (2017) mentioned about four possible
causes: vulnerability to emotional appeals, lack
of engagement, lack of criticism, inadequate
skills in interpreting data. We should start
working with each of these causes separately,
systematically. In addition, one should stop
perceiving media literacy as a self-evident skill
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of anyone studying journalism and begin to teach
it.
Our results are based on the students’ survey of
one of the Ukrainian universities and, therefore,
they need verifying by involving students from
other universities, especially from other regions
of the country. Also, the obtained results allow us
to draw conclusions only about certain factors
(students’ specialty, participation in trainings)
that may affect their ability to judge impartially,
however, it is important to identify other possible
factors influencing the critical thinking of
students.
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