Media literacy: Filmmaker shows kids how easily fake news is created

Dear readers, Lutz Winde is a filmmaker and father of three and now also gives talks at primary schools on media literacy, fake news, disinformation and source research: his media education workshop is primarily intended to educate people.

I’ve known Lutz Winde personally for over 20 years (yes, we’re that old!) because I once approached him at a party in Berlin because I was sure we knew each other. It turned out that he was the actor who played Marco Busch in Marienhof (Yes! I watched that alongside Verbotene Liebe back then). It was very embarrassing (for me).

Since then, we’ve been in contact sporadically; funnily enough, he later had a girl and then twin boys like me and his big one is now 12 and of mobile phone age, which led him to ask himself: Why the hell isn’t media literacy taught systematically in German schools?

Dear Lutz, what have you been most amazed about since your daughter got a mobile phone? 

There were two things in particular: 1. it surprised me how quickly she was able to use all the programmes, how quickly she was able to network and how many very creative things were created together with classmates, e.g. dance videos and the like.

But there were also moments when she stared at her mobile phone as if hypnotised and kept swiping. Where did you have to think for yourself first? 

I had to familiarise myself with the content and why which content was being shown to my daughter. When I switch off and look out of the window, for example, I may not see much there and it doesn’t necessarily enrich my mind, but it’s random and not staged. What I see there is true, real or authentic.

Everything, but also everything, that I see on the internet on any platform is controlled. Someone wants attention because they want to sell something or express their opinion or, or. And to achieve this, people manipulate and lie. But children and young people find it difficult to recognise this.

We told our children at the beginning: Never send anything that you wouldn’t want to see on a huge banner in the next big city. And: Only confirm friendships with people you have already shaken hands with (so please also reject Manuel Neuer! Who knows who’s behind the name…). What other rules should we follow?

As far as sending is concerned, I absolutely agree with you, we need to sensitise children to what the WWW means. Namely WORLDWIDEweb! But even more important is accepting messages or friend requests, because these are of course often manipulated and untrue by algorithms and AI. This really needs to be explained clearly and repeatedly, even if we annoy the children with it. That’s how my workshop came about.

How did you organise your media skills workshop?

This constant explaining and „theoretical „knowing better“  got on my children’s nerves and I thought about how I could introduce children to the topic in a creative and fun way and sensitise them to it. As I have already developed and given many other film workshops, and children and young people always find anything to do with FILM cool, it made sense for me to try something creative and ultimately crafty with them (if you are interested: info@windefilm.de).

The workshop is designed to show and teach children and young people how to write, shoot and cut news editorially. This means we deal with images and texts that are supposed to convey the truth, but even here it becomes clear that there are different opinions.

In the second step, I make the participants realise how easy it is to make a completely different statement (fake news) with the same images that have been edited differently and slightly different texts. And in the third step, I show what can be done even more manipulatively with AI (deep fake news).

We can put something completely different into the mouth of the previously recorded person speaking the news, using their own voice. This, combined with fake images, makes the result even more shocking.

In a review, we then analyse together what to look out for in order to recognise what is fake and what is not. Where does the manipulation begin and how does an algorithm make us only ever see what others want and not us? The workshop can take place in a project week at schools, spread over half a school year or given as a crash course at the weekend in youth centres.

What feedback do you get from the pupils? Do they tell wild stories? 

Of course, there are no limits to a child’s imagination. We filmed a news report in which we reported on individual rats in the schoolyard that were being fought with poison. In the fake news, there were hundreds of them and the children had to save themselves on a climbing frame to avoid being eaten. In Deep Fake News, the rats finally took over the school and taught the pupils.

This was of course a lot of fun during filming, but it also sensitised and shocked the children when they saw words coming out of their mouths that they had never said or things they would never do.

How can my child recognise fake news? 

Unfortunately, this is becoming increasingly difficult. When in doubt, you should question the origin, which is not always easy. So if I receive a news item because I have previously researched the topic, I would always scrutinise it and look for other news items on the topic. If many news items independently claim the same thing, I can be reassured that the publisher is a well-known news service and not a Chinese, Russian or private provider.

Of course, you can still sometimes recognise fake news by the sound quality and the images are often blurred in some places or show digital errors, but the fake is getting better and better and even I find it difficult to recognise it immediately.

Should I really have tried out all the children’s games and all the social media platforms myself?

In principle, of course, it’s good to have a say and make it clear to children that killing human-like creatures shouldn’t necessarily be the aim of a good game, but we also shot down badly animated spaceships as children. I tend to trust trained psychologists and the USK when it comes to age ratings.

Does it make sense to say to your child once a week: Hey, I respect your privacy, but on Friday afternoons we always have a look together to have a chat? (In our case, this led to great conversations) 

Difficult topic! Would we give our children access to our WhatsApps? But basically, it’s great if you can discuss such topics with your children as equals. However, I would rather discuss it on a case-by-case basis. There are often cases to be discussed in school chats, for example, and the children ask themselves how they should behave. Or you get an email from other parents saying that the behaviour in the class chat was not correct. This is a great opportunity to exchange ideas. Or you can show your children when you have spam in your inbox or a stupid comment on Facebook.

What else would you like to say to parents who are about to give their child access to a mobile device?

Stay the course and be a little too strict! It’s not for nothing that governments are regulating the use of social media ever more strictly. As long as the platforms don’t get a better grip on their content, it will become increasingly difficult to protect our children, because soon we won’t be able to tell the difference between fake and non-fake either.

Games, on the other hand, can be fun and even educational, you just have to look for good ones. There are also great apps and, after all, you can also make calls with your devices. So it’s not down to the devices, although I would say that looking out of the window sometimes has something in its favour…