Articles
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rticles on certain issues published either in written media or online (including blogs) represent a very useful and quite easy to use tool. We have access much more easily now to material published almost anywhere in the world as the majority of media has an online duplicate. This can also lead to various problems, as there is a lot of manipulation being done through media channels (of any kind, including blogs), wrong information/data/statistics is being propagated and a facilitator deciding to use this tool has to be aware and careful about it.
Articles can be used in your sessions in various ways: •
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To introduce a topic. Many articles in fact make some sort of an overview of a specific issue, with lists, arguments, suggestions, statistics and quotes from relevant actors. So you can hand participants the article, give them a task to identify certain aspects in it, then, using their task results, clarify and underline the issue you want to introduce and talk about it. To introduce a different perspective/point of view of a certain topic and develop critical thinking. For example: After a first part of a session where you tackled something regarding your issue, to have a second part where you hand out the article (in small groups) that brings in a very different perspective, maybe opposite, controversial, and have a discussion afterwards. You can also start directly with the article depending on the level of your group and the stage in your educational process with them. To have a debate on a certain issue. You can have two articles with opposite points of view, split the group into two, each half receiving an article. They must search for more arguments defending the point of view in the respective article and then debate with each other. There are different way of organizing a debate- we will not go into detail, you can also make it more of a free style without a very structured procedure. It is important to mention here that it doesn’t matter what people’s opinions on the matter are, the group separates randomly – they might end up defending a position they don’t agree with. After the debate itself you need to have a follow-up discussion. To develop critical thinking regarding media content for your group. In this case you might especially use “wrong” materials (manipulative, partial, maybe very biased against different people, even with an aggressive tone against a group of people, wrong statistics or data without sources, etc.). First you give them the article to read, with a task associated to it (the instructions given are neutral but your hidden agenda is for them to point out what is wrong) – for example, to identify the data, the arguments exposed, to consider how varied these are or based on what sources etc. Then, in the follow-up discussion, starting from these elements they identified, ask them to discuss their own views, how much they trust this information, why, why not and so on.
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