The last number of years has seen an escalation of online disinformation – false information deliberately spread to deceive people – concerning a myriad of social issues such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, gender, and migration.
In particular, disinformation has intensified about people who come to Ireland to seek safety and a better life, and this has real-life consequences for our communities.
The impact of racist disinformation is being felt all around Ireland, particularly with the rise in anti-migration protests and the Dublin and Belfast riots, which are leading to challenging discussions among learners in education centres across the country.
The Community Education Against Disinformation (CEAD) initiative is new from our team at AONTAS.
The overall aim of CEAD is to co-create with the community education sector an activity workbook addressing issues of online disinformation.
The workbook will support community education providers in promoting solidarity and inclusion for diverse communities who are learning side-by-side in their centres and classrooms.
It will offer new insights, ideas, and skills for practitioners to address disinformation and racism in the classroom.
The goal is to see changes in learners’ understanding of how disinformation impacts the human rights of ethnic minorities.
The project, which was awarded funding from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), is in its pilot phase.
In this phase, we will share a selection of workbook activities with members of the Community Education Network (CEN), and then they will deliver the training with groups of their learners who are likely to be susceptible to receiving disinformation.
These groups include older adults, lone parents, unemployed people, those with lower socio-economic status, people living in rural areas, and those with lower levels of education attainment.
As part of an evaluation of the pilot, we will gather feedback from both the practitioners and the learners. The aim is to be able to share the workbook – for free – with community education practitioners working across Ireland.
Over the last few months, I have been working with a specialist consultant on the CEAD project and listening to adult and community education practitioners and learners from the different groups we’ve identified who are most at risk of receiving disinformation.
The main issue was they identified was racism and disinformation. Some people shared innovative, community-led approaches they take to tackling these challenges, emphasising the power of community education in addressing the kind of division created or exacerbated by disinformation.
We engaged in these consultations to ensure the needs of these groups are reflected in the workbook. We also want to ensure the creation of a safe learning environment for practitioners and tutors delivering the workbook to these learners.
Storytelling is a big part of the workbook. The aim is to develop learners’ understanding and empathy towards migrant communities. Storytelling can present counter-narratives that challenge dominant stereotypes and biases.
Recently, myself and Larisa (our Adult Education Initiatives Officer) facilitated two workshops on storytelling with two different groups around Ireland who have experiences of migration.
One group consisted of five people who have recently arrived in Ireland. We have included their stories in the workbook.
By highlighting the humanity, resilience, and positive contributions of this group, these stories have the potential to dismantle harmful myths and prejudices.
The second group consisted of three older people who had experiences of emigration from Ireland to the UK between the 1960s and the 1980s.
Including these stories in the workbook highlights the similarities between the experiences of older Irish emigrants and people who have recently arrived in Ireland.
The stories demonstrate rich and diverse migrant experiences which are full of hope and resilience. Some also describe the harrowing experiences that motivated them to leave their home countries.
The aim here is to foster changes in attitudes and behaviours in the project’s target groups by building understanding and empathy towards other communities and people.
The CEAD activity workbook will be ready in Autumn 2025.
We hope that this free, community-driven training tool will provide a much-needed resource to practitioners and their learners and support the communities learning together in adult and community education.
More updates on this coming soon.