00:00I get my news from Tiktok.net
00:02BBC News
00:03Tiktok and Instagram
00:04The paper
00:05The Times
00:06I use Kent online a lot
00:07The Times
00:09We get like the headlines read every day at one
00:11Tiktok, Yahoo Finance or GV News
00:14Mainly social media
00:15Apple News
00:17With an influx of information coming from our phones, our TVs and even through word of mouth
00:22how are you meant to decipher which voices to listen to?
00:25I headed to the University of Kent to find out more
00:28A big part of this is driven by commercial factors
00:31People are producing content using AI or fake news or creating distorted information
00:37in areas where they know they're going to get a lot of clicks
00:39There was a picture of the Pope who had been doctored so it looked like he was wearing a giant white puffer jacket
00:45And it was one of the first times that an AI generated image had been so convincing a journalist were taken in by it
00:51There were always telltale signs that a picture had been created
00:54That's less the case now
00:56And as it becomes more convincing, news organisations fall foul of it
01:00And every time they do, that's another reason for people to trust the news less
01:04With disinformation coming from everywhere, how is this attacking society's most vulnerable?
01:10It is a major problem for those of us in the health service
01:14Because the effect of that is it's starting to drop vaccination rates
01:19Making people more reluctant to accept treatments which are really very important
01:23And that's despite the fact that vaccination is one of the most successful things that we've come up with
01:27Really in the history of medicine
01:29Because for a lot of diseases, it's the only way to present that disease
01:32And if you look at the case of measles for example, once you've got it, there's very limited treatment you can do
01:38So stopping people catching in the first place makes a big difference
01:41So what can we do to fight against this?
01:43I spoke to one organisation, ShoutOut UK
01:46Arming young people with the tools to do exactly this
01:49The cost of creating mass disinformation campaigns has drastically decreased
01:54It also means that you can pump out, you know, false information quite quickly, quite effectively
02:01And also make it look real
02:03The professionalism of this information is definitely getting, for lack of a better term, better
02:09Prevention is easier and cheaper than cure, right?
02:12So the idea that actually what we do is rather than waiting for someone to potentially show signs of radicalisation
02:18We aim to give all young people critical thinking skills around understanding, you know, what to look out for
02:25How do algorithms work?
02:27Looking at kind of data manipulation and how that works
02:29What are bot accounts?
02:30How to spot these things
02:31But also understanding yourself
02:33Quite often, whenever we speak to people about this, miss or malinformation
02:38People often assume, well, yeah, of course, like this is definitely something that exists, but it's not me
02:43I'm not going to fall for it
02:45Other people will, but it's not me
02:46And the reality is that we all need to build our critical thinking skills
02:51So when you see or hear something online, make sure to check your sources to see if it's authentic
02:56Because not everything is always as it seems
02:59Marcellus Almazar, KMTV
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