Challenging Hateful Misinformation Workshop

At All Together Now, we acknowledge that dealing with the complex intersections of misinformation, technology and hate is not easy and can be overwhelming. Where other programs and interventions fall short and simply try to increase media and internet literacy, our new Challenging Hateful Misinformation Training goes beyond. 

This training is designed for Australian educators, frontline workers and parents. You’ll learn how to recognise and deal with divisive and hateful narratives, ideas, stereotypes and codes from the ground up. You’ll gain a deep understanding of the relationship between misinformation, racism and other forms of hate. By the end of this training, you’ll be more confident to tackle controversial issues and gain a variety of practical skills (racial and intersectional literacy strategies) to unpack and challenge conspiracy theories and fake news with your students, clients or children. 

If you are a teacher, youth worker, social worker, counsellor, parent or caregiver and you are concerned about young people, children and adults engaging with problematic, divisive or hateful misinformation, then this training program is for you. 

Come dive into our interactive and activity-based virtual learning experience and walk away with practical insights to implement into your daily life or professional practice.

Who is this training for?

This training is designed for Australian educators, frontline workers (e.g. youth workers, social workers, counsellors), parents and caregivers. It is relevant for anyone who wants to enhance their skills to talk to other (young) people who are engaging with the spectrum of problematic, divisive and/or hateful misinformation and disinformation. 

For educators, the program is designed for educators working in secondary education as well as in tertiary education. This includes teachers/lecturers, school counsellors, principals and assistant principals, librarians, support officers, pastoral support staff, and other school/educational staff, as well as public service professionals working in departmental policy or managerial roles.

For the development of this training, All Together Now has worked with Keith Heggart, a learning design expert at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) focusing on educational technology and citizenship education, in order to ensure the package follows best practice in learning design and methodologies and is fully aligned with the Australian Curriculum.

If you’re an educator, it’s important to note that our program uses a blended approach. It aims to educate teachers about fake news, conspiracy theories and anti-racism and anti-hate education, and also to prepare those teachers to deliver lessons about those topics. It is intended that teachers will be able to make use of the content and activities presented in our training for both planned and unplanned learning opportunities.

What will you learn?

• Learn about the different types of fake news, misinformation and disinformation
• Build an understanding of the nature and features of conspiracy theories, including our cognitive vulnerabilities. Why are they so successful?
• Understand the link between misinformation, fear and anxiety. Why do conspiracy theories flourish in times of social crisis? And who gets blamed?
• Build a deep understanding of the relationship between misinformation, racism and other forms of hate.
• Learn about practices you can put into place to deal with controversial issues appropriately in the classroom, in your workplace or at home.
• Deploy a variety of practical strategies in order to unpack and challenge conspiracy theories and fake news with your students, clients or children, including fun activities and interactive games.
• Deploy racial and intersectional literacy strategies in appropriate contexts and at appropriate times to address hateful fake news and conspiracy theories.
• Learn about the impact of technology and AI & what you can do.

Why choose our training?

Over the last years All Together Now has built up a lot of experience designing innovative projects addressing online hate, racism, far-right extremism, fake news and conspiracy theories. This program builds on this expertise.

The program specifically builds on the results of our NSW government-funded Agent C project. Agent C is a co-designed training program with and for young people in NSW aimed at challenging hateful conspiracy theories and fake news. An independent evaluation of the program found that Agent C has been “a highly impactful project (…) delivering highly topical and applied content in an engaging way”. 

At All Together Now, we acknowledge that dealing with the complex intersections of hate, misinformation and technology is not easy and can be overwhelming, especially for parents, caregivers, educators and other frontline workers.

Masked as sensationalist “news”, all-revealing “truths” or seemingly credible “facts”, online hate these days is often communicated in subtle and casual ways in the form of highly curated and tech-enabled mis/disinformation.

Where other programs and interventions fall short and simply try to increase media and internet literacy, our program goes further, building the skills of participants to recognise and deal with divisive and hateful narratives, ideas, stereotypes and codes from the ground up. We have incorporated methodologies and approaches aimed at enhancing racial and intersectional literacy, resulting in a unique, nuanced and comprehensive training program that builds core skills and capacity for its participants to deal with the complex intersection of online misinformation and hate in an increasingly AI-powered world.

Why is this training important?

Research shows that people are increasingly vulnerable to engaging with divisive online misinformation and disinformation (mis/disinformation). This includes hateful fake news and conspiracy theories and other deliberately misleading content spread via social media. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and its increasingly broad application, including AI-generated deepfake videos that can fuel online misinformation and hate, the challenges have only increased.

As active users of digital technologies, children and young people navigate and process huge amounts of content every day. This content may include divisive and hateful mis/disinformation spread by organised groups, bots or troll factories, or simply pushed onto their personalised news feeds by skewed algorithms.

​​Engagement with online misinformation negatively impacts young people’s mental health. This can have serious consequences including radicalisation, disengagement from school or in the classroom, a disconnect from friends, family and other social connections, and experiencing/perpetrating bullying.

In response, All Together Now is developing training programs aimed at empowering young people to critically engage with online mis/disinformation. Part of this work involves enhancing the skills of teachers, educators, frontline workers, parents and caregivers to better recognise mis/disinformation and to respond to young people who are engaging with it.

More information

• https://alltogethernow.org.au/...
• If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact us via training@alltogethernow.org.au
• Preferred payment methods are via the Humanitix portal. If your organisation would like to pay via invoice, please contact training@alltogethernow.org.au.