Fake news , falsi ricordi e pandemia: il DigitaleDigitale-Civile per un’educazione al pensiero critico

Fake news are a widespread phenomenon in media and digital communication of the present time. They confuse the decision-making processes of individuals, often generating false memories and altered knowledge which, in turn, can undermine the implementation of socially adequate behaviors. The advent of Covid-19 has increased the mechanisms of spread of fake news, highlighting the need to observe the acquisition processes of knowledge underlying the discernment of a true news from a false one. Rereading, under this light, the data of a cognitive-exploratory investigation into the predictive variables of the emergence of false memories associated with fake news related to the pandemic, the following contribution emphasizes the need for educating individuals to a Digital-Civil (Iavarone, 2022), for a 'responsible media' which values the adoption of critical thinking that stimulates an adequate use of one's knowledge as a barrier to the disorientation caused by the infodemic (WHO, 2020) of our time.