Abstract:
In this chapter, we present research based on the empirical analysis of “fake news”
(“FN”), which is aimed at discussing its pedagogical strengths when used as
classroom resources. We focus on “FN” related to COVID-19 and migrants. Our
project aims at combating, first, the spread of disinformation and misinformation
on COVID-19, which causes harm to public health, and, second, the proliferation
of othering and hate discourse in media outlets, which is detrimental to human
rights. Understanding schools as capacity-building structures, we claim that
pedagogical practices based on a content, discursive, and multimedia analysis
of “FN” can strengthen the development of media and information literacy
(MIL) across the curriculum. After a literature review, we present the most
common discursive and multimodal strategies used to establish a misleading
connection between migrants and COVID-19 and provoke negative emotional
reactions in the audience. Thereafter, we discuss how to turn these findings
into pedagogical approaches with the potential to go beyond the identification
of “FN” characteristics and linguistic deconstruction to embrace more holistic
perspectives based on critical discourse and multimodal analysis.