Learn To Recognize Russian Disinformation with DebunkEU's Civic Resilience Course

The purpose of this article is going to be to streamline your access to the Civic Resilience Course at DebunkEU. I'm going to include direct links, so that you don't have to go through anything extra to get to it. 

I will focus only on the Civic Resilience Course in this week's article, and in my next article I'll focus on what I will learn in the more advanced Disinformation Analyst Course. 

Here's a direct shortcut to the course, so you guys don't have to navigate online to find it. You can also take a minute to register on DebunkEU.org (no charge, everything's free, the course and all). They'll send you a confirmation email in a few seconds, and you can begin.

The Quick Pre-Course Survey

First thing you'll do is a quick survey. Don't worry...there are no very personal questions in it. They only use the survey in order to make improvements to the course, according to the DebunkEU website. 

They don't even ask that you type in your real name when you're doing it. In fact, they only ask that you put in your favorite fictional movie character, as a person to refer to you as. So, after typing in "Forrest Gump", I continued with the quiz (say what you want about Forrest not being smart…remember, that classic character was a millionaire!)

Anyway, the survey itself is only fifteen minutes and asks mostly general stuff, such as what kind of media you watch regularly (YouTube, regular TV, etc). It'll also ask you where you mostly trust getting your everyday news from. For example, I myself watch NBC Nightly News almost every day. So, my answer was "regular news on television", even though I actually watch the program on YouTube. 

"How do you feel politically about certain subjects?" is another question. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers. Your responses don't have to be anything in detail, just whether or not you actually follow election races and things like that. 

The last part of the survey is kind of fun. This is where you rate tweets, headlines, and stories. What they do is put a headline in front of you, and you would just respond with how reliable or accurate you think it is. Again, there are no right or wrong answers in the survey part (or the course part for that matter, although there are optional quizzes ). So, you really can have fun with both. 

You'll be surprised at what you think you know and what you actually know about true, valid sources of information.

The Difference Between Misinformation and Disinformation

I've been researching, interviewing for, writing, and editing articles since the early 2010s. And, I'm always surprised at how much has changed in the online landscape when it comes to real and fake sources of information. 

I'm from the era where print newspapers were an everyday thing, and those websites are normally the ones that I still go to for my main news, such as USA Today, NBC News, The New York Times, etc. The thing is, today, in 2022, there are so many people (such as Russian Trolls) who will take images and likenesses of these types of long-time good sources and try to manipulate whoever is looking at them into thinking that what they are reading is actuallycoming from that actual newspaper.

There's a difference between misinformation and disinformation that they teach within the first couple of videos in the course (by the way the course is 90% videos, and really is the length of an hour-and-a-half movie).  "Misinformation" is when the wrong information is "mistakenly" shared, and "Disinformation" is when the wrong information is "deliberately" shared. 

The problem today is that so many people surfing online are so quick to retweet or repost something that is not true, which contributes to "misinformation". That's why this Civic Resilience Course with DebunkEU is very important for all of my readers to take, especially if they spend a lot of time on social media. 

Summary of the Civic Resilience Course with DebunkEU

It wouldn't make much sense for me to tell you everything I learned. But, I will give you a quick rubric to spark your curiosity, so that you'll actually take the course yourself! It's really, really fun you guys, and I hope you take advantage of this free opportunity. 

Even if you're not planning on becoming one of the thousands of Online Cyber Elves to help Ukraine, this course is extremely invaluable to anyone who really wants to know that what they are viewing and believing online is accurate and true.

Section 1: Introduction

Section 2: First Scenario

Section 3: Second Scenario

Section 4: Third Scenario

Section 5: Fourth Scenario

Section 6: Conclusion