“It’s not a hoax! The Fake News Festival is coming back.” This eloquent pop-up appears on the Fake News Fest home page.
Ed It is precisely about the Fake News Fest that we will talk to you today, in a special episode of La bufala tech. Born as a reaction to the fact that the most reliable sites on the internet in recent days are committed to dispelling the hoaxes which on both sides are making the conflict between Israel and Hamas even more painful.
We are not shying away from the chorus out of indifference, but precisely because it seems to us that the topic is already being discussed enough. In short: if you look for fake news outside of the most recent ongoing war, you will find practically nothing (as we ourselves demonstrated last week).
So let’s talk about the event, the second edition of the Fake News Fest, which will be held in Udine from November 14th to 19th.
Il Fake News Festival
The Fake News Fest, the only Italian festival dedicated to fake news, returns to Udine from 14 to 19 November.
The second edition will take place five years after the first, organized in 2018 by the Elsa Udine association.
The event has already had two previews in Campoformido and Gorizia, and a third appointment is expected in Pordenone on November 6th with Gabriele Cruciata and Antonio Bacci.
The Fake News Fest is organized by the young Friulian professionals of the Prisma APS associationhas the support of the Fvg Region, the Friuli Foundation, the Paolo Petrucco Foundation and the Pordenone-Udine Chamber of Commerce, and the patronage and collaboration of the Municipality of Udine and with the patronage of the University of Udine and the Fvg Journalists’ Association .
Why the Fake News Fest
The motivations for the second edition of the Fake News Fest were expressed by Gabriele Franco, curator of the festival.
Franco declared: “Talking about fake news today means talking about freedom, rights, democracy, education. The choices we make every day, at home or at work, our opinions, the vision we have of the world all depend on the ability to intercept, understand and interpret the flood of data and information that affects us every day.
This applies when it comes to health, politics and nutrition, as well as femicide, artificial intelligence and global conflicts. Behind the words ‘fake news’, often misunderstood or abused, there are two others, too often forgotten: ‘critical thinking’.
Committing to learning to orient ourselves rationally and critically in the complex contemporary world is the challenge that awaits each of us, in our own small way. The objective of this festival is therefore to offer the opportunity to take a step forward, all together.”
The program
There will be sixteen events open to the public, including two meetings for schools, an event aimed at university students and businesses and five accredited for the continuous training of professionals, as well as a moment on the role of ongoing education in the fight against fake news. There are eight locations, with three evenings at the theater and one at the cinema.
More than fifty guests were involved, including journalists, activists, science communicators, lawyers, doctors, teachers and trainers. And then writers, influencers and famous comedy groups.
The complete program can be downloaded on the Fake News Fest website.
The topics
There will be many and varied hoaxes to be exposed, with the aim of stimulating the development of critical thinking and disseminating skills and tools to better inform oneself in every area. We have often repeated it in this column too: there is only one way to stay away from misinformation: knowing how to identify it.
Among others, we will talk about journalism, news from all over the world, science and infodemics, nutrition, social networks. And we will discuss a great classic of fake news, in the meeting with the emblematic title “We never went to the Moon”.
Two themes in particular will be central (as well as extremely current): feminism and artificial intelligence.
There will be moments of entertainment, tasting of local products and the screening of documentary films. And there will be two evenings dedicated to comedy.
The press conference
The Fake News Fest was presented on Monday 30 October at the Torre di Santa Maria in Udine.
We quote an excerpt from the speech by Giuseppe Morandini, President of the Friuli Foundation, and Piero Petrucco, representing the Petrucco Foundation and vice-president of the Industrialists’ Association.
Morandini said: “With this initiative, you have the opportunity to convey a great message: being a citizen today is not an easy jobbecause it also means committing to researching the news, and dedicating some of your time to what is in the general interest.”
And Petrucco: “The theme is certainly very topical, and holding a festival allows us to analyze it from multiple facets and study the big problem that digital transformation implies in today’s society. Furthermore, a very important aspect lies in the fact that it is organized by young people, who we will have to look after and accompany so that they have more and more space and recognition.”