Credits
- MOOC coordinators Manuel Gértrudix Barrio & Rubén Arcos Martín
- Content written by Rubén Arcos Martín & Irena Chiru
- Multimedia design by Alejandro Carbonell Alcocer
- Visual Identity by Juan Romero Luis
CRESCEnt Advanced Analytic and Critical Thinking Toolkit
Tackling disinformation requires the development of sound analytic capabilities and also the development of critical thinking to strengthen the resilience of societies to malicious activities in the information and cyber domain. Educated users with critical thinking and digital competences make disinformation and manipulative interference less likely to succeed, and is a key component of deterring by denial approaches to disinformation.
Section 4 “CRESCEnt Advanced Analytic and Critical Thinking Toolkit” has discussed evidence, judgment, and logical reasoning(induction, deduction, and abduction), identifying fallacies often employed as discursive stratagems for different persuasive aims but that have nothing to do with sound reasoning processes, based on facts, true premises, and valid inferences.
Secondly, the section has provided experts’ views on information evaluation and verification, source reliability, content credibility and audiovisual material checking. The section explained the fact-checking process and provided tips for verifying videos.
Finally, the section provided knowledge on disinformation and propaganda, their modus operandi, and provided tools for identifying, analyzing, and exposing hostile information operations. It highlighted the features of successful disinformation and how it can be countered, providing hands-on activities to further develop your propaganda detection skills.
Taken together the section offered a complete set of tools to address the challenge pose by disinformation to our societies, both from the security practitioner, journalist, communicator, and information consumer perspective.
Methodology and Resources
- European Commission (2018). Tackling online disinformation: a European Approach. Brussels, 26.4.2018 COM (2018) 236 final. Available at: EUR-LEX
- Keršanskas, V. (2020). Deterrence: proposing a more strategic approach to countering hybrid threats, Hybrid CoE Papers, no. 2, March 9, 2020. Available at: Hybrid CoE
- Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2006). How to detect media bias & propaganda in national and world news . The Foundation for Critical Thinking .
- Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2014). Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life. New Jersey: Pearson Education .
- Schopenhauer, A. (2004). The Art of Controversy, Translated by T. Bailey Saunders.
