In an environment saturated with messages, it is vital to distinguish between journalism, propaganda, and hoaxes. Citizens need critical thinking and general culture to identify reliable content. Social media platform mix truth and manipulation, making discernment an essential ethical tool.
Journalism, in its best tradition, is based on fact-checking, professional methods, and assumed public responsibility. Propaganda seeks to persuade from an agenda, while hoaxes operate through open manipulation, sensationalism, and lies. Social networks, by their very architecture, tend to mix all these registers in the same flow, without clear hierarchies.
Faced with this mix, the role of the receiver becomes decisive. Intuition or so-called instinct is not enough to discriminate trustworthy content. A solid general culture is necessary to understand historical, political, and cultural contexts, and to detect exaggerations, inconsistencies, or falsehoods.
Without that foundation, citizens are left at the mercy of algorithms and the loudest discourses, which are not always the most honest or well-founded. Hence the importance of defending educational frameworks that promote the development of critical thinking. It is not about indoctrination, but about teaching to ask questions, to doubt rigorously, and to argue with evidence.
The search for truth—or at least for one’s own truth—is a personal process, and also a constant dialogue with others. It requires openness, willingness to contrast sources, and an active attitude toward what is consumed and shared. Believing without questioning whatever coincides with our ideological or emotional sympathies is a form of civic irresponsibility.
Social media platforms are neither hell nor paradise. They host valuable information and lucid analysis alongside a huge amount of noise and manipulation. Knowing how to distinguish between the wheat and the chaff, in turbulent times of information overload, becomes an essential civic tool. It is a concrete way of acting ethically in the complex public sphere.
