Fighting fake news: the role of literacy upon critical thinking

Abstract

The lecturer defines the concepts of literacy and critical thinking and demonstrates the impact of the former on the latter and on other cognitive abilities, such as memory and language comprehension. The reported research-in-progress works with the hypothesis that literacy contributes to raise the quality and depth of critical thinking, which serves as a resource for intellectual self-defense against fake news and other strategies of fact distortion or false propaganda. The lecturer presents results of studies carried out previously by other researchers, as well as preliminary results of an experimental project of her research group in which several subliterate adults perform tests of literacy, media literacy, critical thinking, ability to read emotions and identification with fascist values. The conclusion is that the higher the level of literacy, the greater the capacity for critical thinking.

Full-text of the article is available for this locale: Português (Brasil).