 So thank you again. And now I would like to welcome Dr. Katarzyna Bonkovic, who is affiliated with the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. And she will tell us the fascinating story about Blue Whale Game. Her talk is entitled Fake News, Real Consequences, the Blue Whale Game Study. Dr. Bonkovic, the screen is yours, please. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for invitation. Yes, the story about Blue Whale Game. Okay, so maybe at first, maybe at first my presentation. Just a moment. Okay. Okay, so a few words of introduction because the real consequences, the consequences of fake news are the part of my study about Blue Whale Game. And there was very big studies from two years. And that was about fake news as a phenomenon in 21st century. So today about consequences. But the first point, the important point is the birth of the Blue Whale Game, because the whole story began on March 2016 in Russia, of course, when Galina Mursaev in Novaya Gazeta was published her article about suicide to teenagers. Yeah, that was the title of this article of suicide groups. And she, in this article, described in details two suicides and everything will be okay. But an author connect these two suicides with 130 others suicides. And the one and only key and the common point was the fact that every victim's every 130 person has a profile of contactive platform. So what is contactive platform? Contactive platform is something like Facebook Russian Facebook with 90 million users. So it's not so small. And Galina Mursaev said in this article that the problem of these victims and the common point was the Blue Whale Game. And she said the Blue Whale Game, which is a game in the internet. And you log in on the sites with this game only in internet and you have your mentor or something like this and you have to do many things. And the last things 50 is suicide. Yeah, and that's all. And next day, of course, after this publication, a lot of media from around the world has a question. Okay, what is the problem? What is the Blue Whale Game? How do you find every victim, solve victims 130 in Russia? And in the same time, after publication, next day after publication, Vice Editor-in-Chief was fired to the use of unacceptable methods of verifying information. But the media panic started. And there's a very important fact here in this moment that in the 2016, World Media and the government institution in many countries confirmed that the story is fake. Yeah, so after journalist investigation and the government process, we knew it that the story is fake. In 2016, too, was arrested Philip Budeikin. He reported to the police himself and said that he is an author of this game. Now he is in prison in Russia, but only for encouraging to commit suicide to teenagers, his friends, but not to teenagers from article and not to teenagers from 130 others in article. But the story was beginning. What is the true story? The true story is that there is a game called the Whale. And still is this game. And this game is only on smartphones or tablets, not on the desktop. And this is a game on the website of a French producer of Echo Apples. And this is not fake and this is not a joke. And the goal and the game is that you are the blue whale, you have a basket of your head, basket with fruits, and you have to overcome distance in different countries. So this is a very simple game to small kids. And the second fact is there are suicide groups on the internet, which inside you to commit suicide. On the full legal internet, we have without problems find web pages with information about techniques and tools to commit suicide. And the fake news in this blue whale game story, it's connected to different unrelated facts. We have to remember that fake news, there is not the same so false news. Sometimes in translation, we have two words, fake news or false news. But this is not the same. We have to remember about Claire Wardle typology. She gave us seven types of fake news between satire and lying. And fake news is in the middle of that. So the lying is not the same like fake news. And in this case, fake news, there are connect to real to different facts. Methodology of my studies was that I researched media materials from 30 countries around the world. And this was a media in all four types. So press, radio, television and internet. And I researched the content of media materials and visual components, see how media presented the topic. And today my speech, I researched what were the reaction to the publication in all countries. And I would like to explain about this reaction and this consequences. Results. So these consequences were in 21 countries. Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Egypt, Ecuador, France, Greece, Honduras, Iran, India, Ireland, Canada, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, Malaysia, Moldova, Portugal, Russia, and USA 21 from 30. I think it's a is a big number. I divide the consequences into two types. And that one, the most important fact here, I would like to say that this conclusion from this study is the fact that in one material, in one from the 30 countries materials, was in a formation that fake news, the blue way game is fake news. This is the one material from Austria. In any countries, in any materials, we haven't this information. And I think that a lot of materials still are in the internet, we can find them. So I divided the consequences into two types. First are the consequences of on the educational system in the second on government institution. In my opinion, this consequences from education side are positive. Because in five countries, Bulgaria, India, Ireland, Honduras, and Canada, we had, for example, preventive medic in school with students and parents. We had educational campaigns about online treats. So these consequences are the positive because they play a preventive role. And now, 21st century, if we have a chaos of information, if we have too many fake news, and we have a problem to check information, verifying information, so every campaigns are good and every meetings with students and parents and the people about knowledge and the tools against this information are positive. But the results, the consequences from government side for governments institution are not so optimistic. So in 18 countries, we have a very, very real life consequences, very serious consequences. The lot of that was in nine countries that are police actions. And here we had two types of Polish actions, so our prevention and the investigations. And that was a similar like in an educational consequences because this prevention that are meetings with people about the possibilities dangerous and warning in internet. But initiation from this meeting was not from school, like in the other consequences from the government's institution from police. And the second was an investigation every situation around suicide. Second popular consequences, if we can speak about it, were in four countries were creating a department for fighting for fighting cyber crime and helping the victims. And I think that we're still in this positive space of consequences because helping the victims is still we need this institution and department for fighting cyber crime too. And everything will be okay, but we have to remember about one fact. Every consequences are only after media materials, only after publication, not after analysis, consultation, or something like that, not only after media publication. In two countries in Kazakhstan and in Moldova, we had an extraordinary government meetings, only of the topic of blow away game and possibilities dangerous from this situation. And I think that we have to see and we have to think about about one type of of this government's consequences. There is from the Bangladesh, it's slowing down internet speeds during the night. Between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., internet speeds were slowing down in Bangladesh. So in this moment, I think, for example, about journalists who have to prepare news to the next day. Maybe we need some information without full speed internet, it is impossible. So after media materials, only about maybe it's a blow away game, maybe it's dangerous, it's slowing down internet speeds. In one country in Russia was the plans. In media articles, we can read about the plans of using the army against suicide groups on the internet. We don't know if continuation of this or not, but the plans were. In one country in Saudi Arabia was launching services that were to limit access to the game. And this is very, very funny, I think, because which game? So if we haven't a blow away game, this blow away game, this dangerous blow away game, so which game we were to limit access? In the second, in one country to in Egypt was an official government appeal to the Ministry of Communication to block access to online games. We have to remember that online games now in 21st century are a big part of a branch of online business and computer business, internet business. So block access to online games is a very big problem, it's an economy problem to this part of this business. In one country in Ecuador, we had a request to Interpol in helping to prosecute game administrators. We know that that we haven't a game administrator. But in Russia University, I don't remember name of professor made a study about blow away game administrator. And he said the results was were administrators, but after media materials too. So not before, not when the blow away game was born when the when this topic was started when fake news was born. So after media publication is blow away game and our administrators was a we can find this administrator in online and very very important thing that every administrator was in the 10 12 years old. Yeah, so I think very very young people in one country in Iran was a blocking access to contact the platform. We have to remember that 90 million users without possibility communicate in Iran after media materials. And which conclusions we have after this this situation when we when we are listening on writing about about fake news about blow away game. I think that we have to remember that fake news where are and will exist. And blow away game case show us that fake news. It's very simple to prepare. It's very simple to distribute and it's real warning to all of us as a society modern society. And we have to remember that the consequences are very serious. And we have to remember that we as a user of users of social media we participate in distribution process. If we haven't awareness about online about cyber crime and about fake news. We need knowledge. We need the tools to verify information. And we have to start thinking before. Yeah. For example, a study from I suppose it from MIT but I don't remember clearly is a study about do you remember from where you share an article of your social media. 80% users don't remember from where are articles on my wall for example on Facebook. So I think that this is dangerous because this is a simple way to distribute fake news like for example blow away game. So I think that we we can't stop fake news but we can limited society impact of fake news. We have to building an awareness of media. We have to we need to still observe and educate educate us and and react what if I see a fake news. And so I have here my of course only my proposition that if we gave a tools from journalists from media and for us for society we can limit fake news society impact. Media needs standards of verifying information. Media needs a more discuss about ethics and media needs tools to checking process. Now we have to remember that inside in the newsrooms in redaction we have a conflict without conflict between ethics and economy. And the journalists are in the middle and they have preparing and articles preparing and media materials without ethics or without economy site and they have still still problem with that. And we need a society education campaign knowledge about this information took tools to checking information. Now okay we are speaking about okay check information check in two places yeah but where where can we need concrete we need concrete knowledge is good is a good source this is BBC or maybe Polish public television yeah which source is good which source is gave us true yeah and of course we have to start discussion about responsibility because I think that not the responsibility of fake news is not in only media and not in social media as I think this responsibility is in the middle yeah because we have to think that lying it's more it's better for our brain for our mind yeah it's more interesting and we have to give people knowledge about true and false and fake news and speak about it and and now is discussion in a public discourse is about what can we do with fake news and I ask what can we do before we prepare to fake news because if we have fake news of course we can delay it or not we can share or not but this fake news is and I asked what can we do before preparing fake news process thank you very much