On December 15, 2023, the UTRPI held a training seminar for regional media workers on the topic “Critical thinking in the preparation of informational materials in conditions of war”.
In his introductory speech to the audience, the acting director of the UTRPI, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Secretary of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, Honored Journalist of Ukraine, Glib Golovchenko, noted the basic problems of media and journalists’ activity in wartime conditions and expressed his confidence that the seminar will contribute to their responsible and conscious work.
Media trainer, Vitaliy Krykun, senior lecturer of the Department of Modern Information Technologies and Media Literacy of the UTRPI, Associate Professor of the Department of Logic at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, while demonstrating the thematic presentation, referred to the historical facts of the use of information techniques to achieve the goals set by the conquerors, and to today’s examples.
What is “hybrid war”, what is its effect in the context of Russian aggression against Ukraine; the role of information war as a component of hybrid war; the importance of mass media in the conditions of information war; critical thinking as a skill under conditions of war – during the discussion the audience had the opportunity to learn about these and other subjects, tools, mechanisms and logic of influence on consumers of media products.
The concepts of “truth”, “lie”, “post-truth”: essence and relationship, as well as means of effective communicative influence in war conditions are analyzed. The participants of the seminar also found out how the “emotional brain” of a person, which is the object of communicative influence, is capable of reacting and why the corresponding attacks are carried out on it.
The point of critical thinking as a skill; the meaning of the concept of “critical thinking”; critical thinking, logic, knowledge; stages of cognitive activity; features and basic forms of abstract thinking; schemes of logically correct inferences (on the example of modus ponens and modus tollens); the concept of “truth”, the main theories of truth – all these components of the training led the participants of the seminar to the conclusion about the need for conscious and responsible informing of society. And although the reliability of information, unfortunately, is mostly poorly monetized, the very creation and development of the media reputation institute should play its positive role. And for now, critical thinking is our everything.