Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: RONILDO NICODEMOS DA SILVA

MATHEMATICS AND FAKE NEWS: REFLECTIONS ON MATHEMATICS EDUCATION ABOUT NEWS CONSUMPTION

Misinformation. Mathematics Education. Media Education. Post- truth.

Mathematics is traditionally presented as a little knowledge accessible, strictly logical, rational and neutral, being constantly neglected its political implications in the school and social spheres. On a post-truth period, in which objective facts less influence opinion public than emotional appeals, disinformation propagating groups, usually with economic and political interests, try to manipulate opinion public knowledge and delegitimize already exhausted scientific knowledge. Very often these movements propagate conspiracy theories intrinsically related to quantitative issues and these actions can directly impact the proper functioning of democratic institutions. In this context, we developed our research question: what possible contributions of Mathematics Education in the interpretation of news in a post-truth period? To answer this questioning, we delimited as general objective to analyze the main news fakes that were widely disseminated on social networks between the years 2016 and 2021. As it is configured as documentary research, we will use Le's theory Goff (2003) to analyze, with a look at the History of the Present Time, these intentionally fabricated documents, the purpose of which is to manipulate opinion public. We use Google Trends to find the biggest search trends of the term Fake News on the internet and identified them with the help of the main national fact-checking platforms, also known as fact- checking. As a result, we categorized the mathematical knowledge that are related to the main fake news and we have developed a series of activities that allow, with a view of mathematics and media education, contribute to a critical reading of the news. Finally, when we develop such analyses, it was intended to provide reflections on democracy and non-neutrality science, in particular, mathematics and its intrinsic relationship with the interests of organized groups in the spread of disinformation.