Banca de DEFESA: 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 knowledge that is not accessible, strictly
logical, rational and neutral, and its political implications in the school and social
sphere are constantly neglected. In a post-truth period, in which objective facts
influence public opinion less than emotional appeals, disinformation propagating
groups, usually with economic and political interests, try to manipulate public opinion
and delegitimize already exhausted scientific knowledge. Too 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 elaborated our research question: how can
Mathematics Education contribute to Media Education in a post-truth era? To answer
this question, we delimited as a general objective to analyze the main fake news that
was widely disseminated on social networks between the years 2016 and 2021. The
choice of this period was to understand the election of US President Donald Trump,
the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union and the period of the
pandemic of SARS-CoV-2. Because it is configured as a documentary research with
a qualitative approach, we will use Le Goff's theory (2003) to analyze these
intentionally fabricated documents with the explicit objective of manipulating public
opinion. We use Google Trends to locate the biggest search trends for the term Fake
News on the internet and identify them with the help of major national fact-checking
platforms, also known as fact-checking. As a result, we have developed a series of
activities that aims to allow, with a look of critical and media mathematical
education, to contribute to a critical reading of the news. Finally, when developing
such analyses, it was intended to provide reflections on democracy and the non-
neutrality of science, especially mathematics, and its intrinsic relationship with the
interests of organized groups in the propagation of disinformation. From this
research it was possible to reflect that: mathematics is not good, is not bad and
much less neutral and, when worked with a critical eye, has the potential to be an
instrument for promoting democracy and citizen formation.