You've caught yourself thinking, too: "This is definitely fake... but maybe not?" Or maybe you recognise yourself in the moment when you read a news story with a lot of emotions and you want to send it to someone? In the era of "shock content" and information overload, it is important to be able to keep your head. You also need to learn to ask questions: "Who is showing me this and why?"
This was the topic of discussion at the two-day STOPmanipulator training held on 2-3 April 2025 in Zhytomyr. The event was organised by the Academy of Ukrainian Press and supported by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Ukraine.
🧠 Participants were trained in critical thinking, fake recognition skills, understanding of manipulators' language tricks, digital security and cyber hygiene.
Valeriy Ivanov, President of the Academy of Ukrainian Press, opened the event by reminding: "Fakes have no power on their own - they are powered by our trust. Sometimes it is blind".
Participants discussed why we are "led" by loud headlines, how confirmation bias works, why social media create information bubbles, and why hate speech is not just words.
Yulia Kulyk, AUP project coordinator, emphasised: "Manipulation often looks convincing. But as soon as you ask ‘why?’, it falls apart".
💬 And the culmination was the signature game "Media Literate Mafia" - where it was necessary not only to identify "suspects" but also to turn on analytics, observation and healthy suspicion.
Andrii Yurychko, PhD in Philology, journalist, lecturer at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, emphasised: "The most dangerous fakes are those that are “as if true”. They are the hardest to spot if you don't train your brain every day".
📍 Two days later, and the usual headlines seem less believable. And the decision to click "share" is less hasty. Because now there is the main thing - a conscious attitude to information.
✨ The STOP manipulator in Zhytomyr showed that information literacy is not a boring science, but a shield that should be carried in every scroll bar.
