DISINFORMATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF GRADUATE DEGREES IN INFORMATION SCIENCE IN BRAZIL: COMBAT STRATEGIES AND LIBRARY WORK
Post-truth; Misinformation; Fake News; Information Science; Librarian Person; Scientific Observatory to Combat Disinformation.
For some time now, an informational disorder has jeopardized the exercise of citizenship and interfered in society's individual and collective choices. Considering that disinformation presents a problem specific to the information area, it is up to Information Science and Librarianship to study and implement tangible practices that ensure access to reliable information, in order to combat the disinformation ecosystem. Therefore, the discussions promoted so far in postgraduate programs in the field of Information Science at Brazilian universities about misinformation in terms of conceptual manifestations on the subject in course completion research, as well as the coping strategies suggested in them, is of interest to this investigation. The corpus selected for analysis were the theses and dissertations of the stricto sensu graduate programs in the area of Information Science in Brazil linked to the theme of disinformation and its aspects: fake news and post-truth, published in the Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), from 2012 to 2022. The study was based on the concepts of Information, Post-truth, Fake news, Information Competency and Critical Information Competency to solve the problem, which starts from the following question: How do they present themselves? the definitions of post-truth, disinformation and fake news in theses and dissertations of stricto sensu graduate programs in Information Science in Brazil, and how these researches can contribute to the development of technical products that can help librarians in the fight to misinformation? We brought as a general objective: To analyze the concepts related to disinformation and to identify the coping strategies from the dissertations and theses of the stricto sensu graduate programs in the area of Information Science in Brazil. The specific objectives were: a) To map research (dissertations and theses) on the subject of disinformation, from postgraduate programs in the area of Information Science in Brazil, published in BDTD; b) Characterize the concepts of post-truth, misinformation and fake news used by the authors; c) Identify strategies to combat misinformation; d) Establish a product that brings together research and strategies that are decisive for the librarian's role in combating misinformation. The purpose, in achieving these objectives, is to draw an overview of what there is already research in the area on this subject, as well as the possibility of proposing a scientific observatory to combat disinformation as a tool to face this informational disorder. The methodology used was bibliographical research with a quali-quantitative approach, and content analysis technique from the survey of scientific productions made available in open access form in the BDTD on the subject. Next, analysis categories were defined, according to the proposed objectives. Finally, some strategies were established that can be used by information professionals in general, and in particular, by librarians, in partnership with Information Science professionals and other areas, in a joint effort to combat the harmful effects of misinformation. That said, we built, as a technical product, the proposal to implement the Scientific Observatory to Combat Disinformation, as a scientific and practical tool for monitoring and confronting the current informational disorder.