Historical consciousness and disinformation: challenges for History Teaching in digital
culture
Historical consciousness; Disinformation; History Education.
The expansion of digital technologies has transformed the ways in which information is
produced, circulated, and appropriated, also intensifying disputes over interpretations of
the past. In this context, the circulation of disinformation, denialist discourses, fake news,
and narratives associated with post-truth culture represents a challenge for History
Education and for the development of students’ critical thinking. This research aims to
analyze how the development of historical consciousness can contribute to strengthening
the critical capacity of high school students in the face of the circulation of narratives
about the past. Developed within the Professional Master’s Program in History Teaching
(PROFHISTÓRIA), the study articulates the concepts of historical consciousness, History
Education, historical culture, and Public History with discussions on disinformation,
infodemic, information overload, denialism, and post-truth. Based on this framework, the
Historical Consciousness Laboratory is proposed as an educational product for high school
students, structured around activities involving problematization, contextualization,
source investigation, comparison of narratives, interpretation, argumentation, and the
production of historical narratives. The proposal seeks to contribute to students’
development of criteria for analyzing sources, confronting evidence, and constructing
historically grounded interpretations, thereby expanding their intellectual autonomy in
the face of information circulating in digital environments. The research argues, therefore,
that the development of historical consciousness can constitute a pedagogical approach
to confronting disinformation and strengthening History Education in digital culture.