Students from 5th grade of Primary School to 4th year of Secondary School from six educational centers in Girona have participated in the competition of informative pieces and drawings on the right to informationAnalyzing the rise of disinformation and fake news, the project, organized by ARA and UNICEF, with the collaboration of the Girona City Council and Plataforma Educativa, involved more than 100 students from IES Ermessenda, Maristes Girona, Migdia School, Montessori Girona, IES Montilivi, Fedac Sant Narcís, and IES Vicens Vives. Unlike previous competitions, students were asked to write informative pieces, not stories, on the topic of disinformation and fake news. fake newsMost of the participants wrote opinion pieces. Below are the winning entries and drawings. The prizes will be awarded on Tuesday, November 25th at the La Mercè Cultural Center in Girona.

Harvard's most experienced researchers warned her: be careful, you're treading on slippery ground. But Joan Donovan continued leading a university investigation that sought to delve deeper into the secrets revealed by Facebook following a major document leak. Finally, after the Zuckerbergs gave €500 million to the American institution, her superiors informed her that the project was over. ARA interviewed this academic, who visited Barcelona as part of CIDOB talks on the erosion of democracies.

Hours after Israel's surprise attack on Iran that sparked the current war between the two countriesRola, a young woman living in Damascus, burst into jubilation. "The Iranians have shot down two Israeli planes and captured one of the pilots! Now they're finally getting what they deserve!" she commented, her eyes glued to her mobile phone screen. The source was the Iranian press, and images of the alleged downed fighter jets and the arrested pilot were even shared on social media. However, the news ended up being just one of hundreds of stories.fake newscirculating these days on social media about a war conflict that also has a dimension of fighting for the story.

To the prejudices pointed out by feminist women, immigrants, poor people, Roma people or the LGBTIQ community, we must add the impact of misinformation, the lies that spread like wildfire through virtual profiles. It is not that false information is a modern scenario, but in the last decade there has been "a turning point", starting with Brexit and the first elections in which Donald Trump won in the US.

The opacity surrounding the activity of interest groups—or lobbies—in the Congress of Deputies is about to end. Or at least, a law is now being prepared to attempt to regulate them. This Tuesday afternoon, the plenary session debated a proposal by the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) to limit their activity, requiring them to register in a public registry—as is already done in Catalonia—and to comply with the chamber's code of conduct. In the event of noncompliance and the dissemination of, for example, false information, a sanctioning regime is established that could lead to expulsion from Congress. The Spanish government's partners have already announced they will vote in favor, while the PP and Vox have accused the Socialists of promoting the initiative when they are "besieged by corruption," criticized Carmen Navarro, a member of the Popular Party (PP).

November 9, 2024. Argentina. Christian Martin, European correspondent for La Nación+ (LN+), reporting from the United Kingdom, talks about the floods of Cadaqués with a false image. Instead of showing on-screen photos of cars crammed into the riverbank, the Argentine news program depicts the downpours with the Onyar River, at the height of Girona's iconic colorful houses, filled with cars swept away by the force of the river. What Argentines perceived as just another piece of news, for Girona residents—when the video spread on social media—was a demonstration of the extent to which images generated by artificial intelligence can alter our perception of reality and generate misinformation.

Populism, which easily becomes a catchy euphemism for fascism, spreads like a virus with every public lie and every anti-political gesture. With every victory of cynicism, with every deception of the electorate and with every "they are all the same" repeated without thinking, we lose the opportunity to transform the future and build a country worth living in for our children. That is why the opportunity to vote is an extraordinary responsibility in any circumstance, and if not ask our grandparents, who put their necks on the line so that we, who are well fed, drag our feet to the polling stations.