Abstract:

Social networks have positioned themselves as the main way through which people access information, but also share it. This is a problem in the field of health, since the news can include different false elements, mixed with true ones, which can influence the decisions that people make regarding their own care. In this work, a ten-session seminar was held in which 17 psychology students and the teacher who gave the seminar participated. Topics such as: the cognitive elements associated with the discrimination of fake news, the role of social networks in the dissemination of fake news, and how news fact-checking work were reviewed. Afterwards, they were presented with an instrument created in google forms containing 10 news items previously chosen, among them, news with mixed true and false elements about COVID-19. The task consisted of them reading the headlines, if they wanted they could access the full story and make arguments for or against the content of each story. The arguments show that the participants were able to differentiate between true and false content within the same news item, they also differentiated between levels of veracity of the sources, they contrasted the claims of authority figures (artists, doctors, administrative personnel) against the evidence shown in the news and even delved into some news comparing them with other sources, using the title to search for other similar portals. It is concluded that the seminar had an important impact on the analysis of the news, possibly generating analysis strategies in the participants, which is important to create specific interventions for the discrimination of fake news in the future.

Keywords:

Fake news, formation, psychology, covid-19.