When we think of knowledge and politics, we may immediately have images of politicians expressing themselves in election campaigns and political debates. Politics can be a game of manipulating facts to influence public opinion. Does that mean that facts don’t matter in politics? With the expansion of the media through the use of modern technologies, we encounter an overwhelming amount of claims made by politicians on a daily basis. In this “Post-Truth Era”, it seems increasingly difficult to distinguish news from “fake news” and knowledge from propaganda.
The IB students held a press conference in the role of politicians, manipulating facts, reason and language to present events or similar events from a different perspective in order to fit a particular political agenda. They were also confronted with questions aimed at exposing such things as misleading statistics, partisanship and logical fallacies.
Amina Aldubouni
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