 Good afternoon, we are starting our fourth panel. And the host of this panel is Professor Rafał Reguła. Rafał, please, floor is yours. Thank you very much. I hope, welcome everyone. I hope that after lunch the spirits are elevated. We've got plenty of strength to further explore these interesting topics. I am really greatly honoured to have the opportunity to moderate or host this panel. Our panel is entitled Affected Groups, the Perspectives of Groups Under Stress. And we have today three distinguished guest speakers who agreed to share with us their knowledge about fake news and their consequences for individuals. Our first speaker is Professor Maciej Pilecki, who is working at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Aguilada University Medical College here in Kraków. And he will give us a talk entitled COVID-19 in the Seek of Facts. Welcome, Professor Pilecki, and the screen is yours. Thank you very much. So, give a moment, I'll start the presentation. Could you see the presentation? Yes. Yeah, OK. So thank you very much for inviting me for this meeting. And actually, this is not a topic of my scientific interest, but the question of misinformation, facts, and the consequences of the misinformation on everyday physician and psychiatrist's work becomes more and more important, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is a substantial global challenge. And what's very characteristic for this type of medical problems is that the decision of a single person can influence a life of a big population, or almost the whole population, because all pandemics would start with a patient zero. So the very patient that started the problem, and then you can observe how, very often, regarding to the decision of single humans, the virus can spread or bacteria can spread. The misinformation could be an important problem then, because people can turn to look forward in the ineffective remedies, so that they are mislead and that they are receiving the guidance that something is going to help that actually is not going to help. That some of the remedies could be potentially harmful or danger, that they can overact, but also that they can underact. So all these issues would be due to the misinformation and would be due to lack of proper knowledge regarding the problems asked that COVID-19 pandemic is. And this seems to be a rather huge problem, because it seems that it is the research about the YouTube videos where 25 of them, and there were top videos about the COVID-19, they had some misleading information, and there had been 62 million reviewers worldwide. So it shows how the lack of a proper information or the misinformation could be harmful and dangerous for the population, not exactly of one country, but internationally. The research about what the consequences of lack of a proper or false information are, gives three areas that we have to be aware of. First one is that people that are under the influence of misinformation cannot want to vaccinate against COVID-19, that they will not recommend other to vaccinate, and what is especially important nowadays, they are not willing to comply or it decreased the willingness to comply with some guidance measures. So these are the three areas that what we find in the research would be important due to the misinformation that people are challenged with. And this is an example of misinformation on two levels, because first of all, I will show you what Donald Trump really said, but what is written here is close to his words, but there is not exactly Donald Trump willing people to drink Clorox, and it is always the question, is this kind of the meme only a kind of funny comment to his words, or is it the information that people can use and can misunderstand? We are not going to go through the detailed description of what Donald Trump said on the 23rd, but it was rather his question, that recommendation, that people should use the substances like Clorox to deal with the SARS-CoV-2 infection. But as you can see, this is the USA Google Trends, that a few days after his talk about that issue, the questions about the use of disinfectants started to rapidly increase, and there were some risky behaviors of not very, it was the single cases, but it showed us how the misinformation can go around the world, go around one country. We don't have time to speak about that, but when we have an issue of medical populism, due to what politicians are doing, there are four areas, this is the simplification of pandemic, dramatization of the crisis, in contrary to the simplification, forging of divisions, we know it's also from our country. And what Trump did and what correlates with the three-thirds dimensions is invocation of knowledge claims that has some political reasons. Who believes in fake news regarding the COVID-19 pandemic? Older citizens, people who are self-reported, they come from minorities, they have repeated exposure to fake news, the feeling of deprivation, lower trust in science and scientists, lower trust in journalists, lower trust in government and conservatism in political beliefs. Well, we have some kind of a hopeful thinking that education can lead to the... can challenge the acceptance or believing in misinformation, but it is questionable. Even if it is a matter of life or death, as it is in the COVID-19 pandemic. So, there is an idea of inoculation against fake news, like we have a medical inoculation, but there are some reasons why we can have doubt if it is really possible to do this kind of fake news inoculation. In study about the agreement with aphorisms, and these aphorisms were having without the source attribution, it is quite high that people accept from a very difficult different group. They accept or they agree with aphorism if they don't know who is the author of the aphorism. But when the author of the aphorism is someone they don't agree or they don't believe in, they don't really want, they don't really agree with the aphorism, and then their education has nothing to do this with that, and that these beliefs are quite often part of our social identity, and that the social identity that we choose the leaders that express our aggression, not that the leaders who express aggressions have our submissive behaviors. So, it was an old Chinese book about, and this is a sentence from this book, is the truth from facts, and the question is that if many thousand years later we are in the sea of facts, not the truth. So, in a situation of regression we are looking for the miracle cures, we are looking for the gifted physicians, we even sometimes think about the physicians like almost gods, or the health workers are like being as a god, someone very powerful because it could reduce our anxiety. But the question is what about the healthcare professionals and their beliefs in a false knowledge or false information. This is an important issue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, because we had been challenged with many informations that they were giving kind of opposite data, and that it had been in a kind of a court-tradictory informations in the scientific journals. This is an example on March 14th, French Health Minister Olivier Verrand tweeted that talking anti-inflammatory drugs, for instance ibuprofen, could be risky for the patients having the COVID-19 infection, and in within 24 hours over 43,000 people retweeted this advice. It was also an opinion from the World Health Organization leader, one of the leaders, Christian Liedemar, about that. In 24 hours the authorities recognized that it seems to be not exactly true information, that it is based only on a single letter published online in the Lancet on March 11th, not giving any research data, but rather the opinion of the authors about the reaction between the ibuprofen and the increased expression of AC2 and facilitation of COVID-19 infection. And here you have the Google Waves in France, then in Poland, and probably being kind of a master in collecting or taking this data and changing this data into the graphic expression, that we can create the wave, the Google Wave through all the world, regarding the question, coronavirus ibuprofen, and we can see how this information can go all around the world. So a little bit about my department and the fake news issue that we deal with and the ways that we decided to challenge this problem, that at the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic, we were transferred into a COVID-19 unit for the psychiatric patients, and one of the very important changes that we made into our functioning was that we started to have the team that was collecting, updating, research-based knowledge and guidelines about the COVID-19, and an important part of these reports is in Polish, because I'm not going to go into details with that. It is all kind of an example of work of our colleagues, Dr. Marcin Siewek and Tim, that the important part of that report was information about data that we can trust, the information that we can trust, and for us it was something very important that there was someone who was a group of people who were searching, finding an exact sources, finding the information that we can rely on, and that it can reduce the level of our attention, or regarding, for instance, our fear that we are going to die and how risky it is to work with the COVID-19 patients. We had nine reports that had been made on a weekly basis, changing also the information that had been in a prior reports, updating them and updating our knowledge. So, what have you done to find the first news? I decided to end my presentation with my personal fight, and as you know, usually when we have the conference presentation about the drugs, it is a conflict of interest disclosure, and what I decided to do was to do the risk of misinformation disclosure in this presentation. And first of all, I'm not sure if on slide three information is taken from Pennycock paper or Rosenbeck paper. I miss it at the very beginning, and well, then I base off my memory, not double check in the internet. Secondly, the information about the book of Chan was taken from Wikipedia, and the translation of the title of my presentation into English and Chinese was done by the Google translator, and what makes me a little bit afraid about that is that I haven't found a similar title in the internet. So, it means that it is probably brilliant, and this is something that no one else think to do, or it is not very British English. So, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Prostate Pilatki. It is really, really, really pleasure to listen to this talk. A lot of interesting information. I believe we have two questions from our listeners, and one is how we can distinguish between fake and true information regarding COVID-19 pandemic. Is there any clue how average person could distinguish what is true and what is untrue? I think this is very difficult, but we have to base on scientific newspapers, but then we have to be aware that it is the opinion of experts, that there is a single case, that there is research, that this is a meta-analysis, and what we have to be aware of is that there are very big differences between the reliability of the sources. So, at the very beginning of the pandemic, that was the idea that the adolescents, they are not going to spread the virus, and then what we learned from our experience was that it is not true, but it was the experts' opinion that probably they are not going to... that this is not going to be the important issue. So, double-check what is the source. Then, in three-week times, check if it is still something that you have to believe in, and don't trust that something, or don't relay all the data that was collected and that the knowledge you get one month ago, you have to change, you have to be very clear and involved in that. But if this is a newspaper knowledge, well, it is better not to use it as a source of important information. Because what you said is a scientific method of distinguishing between what is fake news and what could be true, but do you think is there any single queue which just the average person, not scientist, someone who does not have access to, you know, a specialist medical databases, could do on the first sight? Yeah, you can find... in Internet, you can find blogs of physicians that you can find people who are... well, they are scientists. And this would be the important source of information, but then you have to have your critical mind and you have to have also information from different sources to see what are the differences, what are the points of view of different experts. This is the only solution we can have. Probably not only due to the COVID-19, but probably due to the all data, all information we are getting. Yeah, okay, thank you. We've got the second question. Oh, even the third question. Let's start from the last one. From your last slide, we see that there was a serious lapses in communication about COVID from experts possibly adversely affecting public policy. How can we recover from this seeking generalizations leading to mistrust in scientific community? This is the issue, but you know that I noticed something that was due to the single information, but important person. But what is the most dangerous thing I think is the interaction between science and politics. We see it in chloroquine issue, that there were some single studies about the chloroquine use. And then due to the politic medical populism, they were used by politicians to do what the politicians usually do, so to try to control people. So I don't think that it is the question of the trust and the lack of the trust. It is the question of asking questions and looking for the answers, but also having this what is characteristic for the scientists. So the answer is not the true. The answer is the answer. So I don't think that it is kind of a possibility of being back into the world of harmony and having the trust. This is a complicated word with a lot of conflicts and also a conflict of interests. Okay, thank you very much. We've got one more question. I believe this addresses your psychiatric background. Do you think that there is the susceptibility to fake news can be somehow associated with some sort of psychiatric disorders? Yeah, this is the question. The question was whether people who believe in fake news are somehow mentally disordered. Can we make such a generalization or find some overlap between vulnerability to fake news and some sort of... No, I don't think so. And this is the way of thinking we had in the 50s that there are the people who are willing to be controlled and there are people who are regressed and then this aggressive leader that is taking control towards them. It comes from at least Miller's bad education about the Hitler and the people who followed them. But what we know now is that the people who want to have the conflict with other group of the people by choosing the leader that is... that prove them that their aggressive behaviors are not going to be stopped and that are going to be effective. And I am afraid that the fake news are the weapon, not the mental illness. And we know it from Poland. We know it from Poland because we know that... Well, I'm not going to be very into the politics issues, but we know that when there is kind of a strong belief the people who has this belief they don't want data that will challenge the way they think. And partly it is because the emotional attitudes but partly it is cynical. I think that the fake news and medicine would be the same. Thank you very much. I think we should go forward if there are any more questions maybe if you stay with us we can discuss. And so thank you again. And now I would like to welcome Dr. Katarzyna Bonkowicz who is affiliated with the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. And she will tell us a fascinating story about Blue Whale Game. Her talk is entitled Fake News, Real Consequences the Blue Whale Game Study. Dr. Bonkowicz 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 there was about fake news as a phenomenon in 21st century. So today about 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 Novoaia Gazeta was published her article about suicide to teenagers. It was the title of this article of suicide groups and she in this article describe 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 victims every 130 person has a profile of contactive platform. Contactive platform is something like Facebook, Russian Facebook with the 90 million users so it's not so 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 is a game in the internet and you log in on the sites and you have to do many things and the last thing is suicide. Next day after this publication a lot of media around the world has a question what is the problem what is the Blue Whale Game how do you find every victims 130 in Russia and in the same time after publication Vice Editor-in-Chief was fired to the use of unacceptable methods of verifying information but the media panic started and it's a very important fact here in this moment that in the 2016 World Media and the government institution in many countries confirmed the story is fake. So after a journalist investigation and the government process said 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 from encouraging to commit suicide two teenagers from one article and not two 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 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 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 connect two 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 the 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 two real two different facts methodology of my studies was 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 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 these 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 it's a big number I divide the consequences into two types and the 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 information that fake news that Blue Eyed Game is fake news this is 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 on the educational system in the second on government institution in my opinion these consequences from education side are positive because in five countries Bulgaria, India, Ireland, Honduras and Canada we had a preventive medic in school with students and parents we had educational campaigns about online threats so these consequences are the positive because they play a preventive role and now in the 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 government's institution are not so optimistic so in 18 countries we have a very, very real life consequences very serious consequences a 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 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 of government's institution from police and the second was an investigation every situation around suicide second popular consequences that we can speak about it were in four countries were creating a department for fighting for fighting cybercrime and helping the victims we're still in this positive space of consequences because helping the victims is still we need this institution and department for fighting cybercrime too and everything will be okay but we have to remember about one fact every consequences are only after media materials 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 whale 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 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 was 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 whale 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 army the army against suicide groups on the internet we don't know its continuation of this or not but the plans were one country in Saudi Arabia was launching services that were to limit access to the game and this is very funny I think because which game so if we haven't blow whale game this blow whale game this dangerous blow whale game so which game we were to limit access in the second in one country in Egypt was the official government appeal to the ministry of communication to block access to online game games we have to remember that online games now in 21st century are a big part of a branch of online business on computer business internet business yeah so block access to online games is a very big problem to this 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 we haven't game administrator but in Russia university I don't remember name of professor made a study about blue whale game administrator and he said the results was were administrators but after media materials to so not before not when the blue whale game was born when the when this topic was started when fake news was born so after media publication is blue whale game and are 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 after this the situation when we when we are listening on writing about about fake news about blue whale game I think that we have to remember that fake news where are and will exist and blue whale 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 as a 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 to know knowledge we need to 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 and send 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 blue whale game so I think that we we can't stop fake news but we can limit the impact of fake news we have to build awareness of media we need to still observe and educate us 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 important task 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 media materials without ethics or without economy side and they have 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 in two places but where we need concrete knowledge is a good source this is BBC or maybe polish public television which source is good which source is gave us true and of course we have to start discussion about responsibility because I think that not this responsibility of fake news is not in only media and not in social media I think this responsibility is in the middle because we have to think that lying it's more better for our brain for our mind it's more interesting and we have to give people knowledge about true and false and fake news and speak about it and now is discussion in the public discourse is about what can we do about 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 ask what can we do before preparing fake news process and I am waiting for a question Thank you very much, this was fascinating story we've got actually several questions from our listeners and the first is from the person who just needs some clarification the first news about the blue whale game and its suicidal consequences were actually fake and it got spread worldwide and in the consequence there appeared a real dangerous game is it true? The first game was just fake news but then it became somehow the real thing Is this a question here on chat so where is which one is that because I don't see how popular is this game to clarify to clarify, okay, okay, okay, I see okay so the one moment the first information about the blue whale game the first publication from Galina Morsayev was a that was a true but in the other place so because Galina Morsayev said that two suicides had to connect with 130 others and the common point is it's a blue whale game I think that popular, the blue whale game was very popular because that was very interesting topic and this topic was interesting for everyone because it's about life and death, about the teenagers so everybody knows teenagers so it's if we have a fake news about the politics we have, okay, politics is I'm not interested in politics, politics is not my hobby and life and death is a hobby of all of us so we have to and if it's a life and death topic connect with internet it's a perfect recipe to success really, of course ironic, is having a consequence has been drawn from the fake news about the game I don't think so if we can still in internet find the old article from 2016 for 2017-18 but we have an article from 2017-18 if I could remember from July on this year what is a blue whale game, is it dangerous or not so on the question can a similar story repeat itself I think, yeah and I think that in blue whale game is a very important signal, be careful because the fake news, it's a real problem for you I think that this is the most important consequences for us okay we can spend more questions, so shall I moderate it or you would prefer to go? you can moderate it, it's okay I believe that the next question was asked when you presented the measures taken by different countries to limit the impact of the game and the question is what is the methodology of linking those consequences to the original stimuli were they directly quoted in public policy documents one moment I'll find that and this I research only media materials and I don't speak here in my speech but my study was in 30 countries around the world and Polish media and I had that of course in the 30 countries was not so in details research because of course there's other languages okay if that was for example English language or European languages okay but for example Chinese or something like this was a little different but for example in Polish space what was information about blue whale game from the minister of education to every schools in Poland with communicate be careful we have a big danger in the internet and this is a blue whale game and this letter was sent 2017 on March so one year after the blue whale game was born and the half after that we knew that the blue whale game is fake news and very often in the materials from around the world was parts from original government documents because there are for example sometimes interviews with minister interviews with someone else okay thank you very much I believe there is a follow up given the answer are you not risking the fallacy of mistaking correlation for causation oh hmm I don't think so because I researched research connection between media and society so if our minister minister of education or other minister said after media publication he made a decision so I think this is a very serious signal yeah and that was very important that a lot of materials what was from the not from the tabloids very seriously very seriously media and the first information of course about blue whale game was in the sun and the daily mail but if I can remember on 2017 one information about blue whale game as a fake news was on BBC the second material from the beginning 2019 was a very big material very big reportage about how we believe about blue whale game but this is very interesting that every media believe on that because that was that was like true you know that in internet we have a very dangerous parts and very dangerous websites in internet yes so that was like true I believe we have time for just one question and three minutes to answer can we hypothesize that some of those policy changes were really harvesting the media attention to provide a pretence to implement changes that were motivated by other factors so did the governments introduce this to introduce some other changes I think that of course we can hypothesize size but ok if we are thinking when I researched case from Russia I was so exciting because you know this is a place where born this big situation it was very interesting that of course it was the one and only place that we have plans to use the army against against the blue whale game and I think that this case will be only to provide pretence and something like that but other I don't think so that was a feeling of dangerous feeling of warning and I think that people from government was scared if I remember in Egypt was a situation that the son of minister commits suicide and in this time so this minister said ok this is my child this is true so I think that was maybe not so long but a time for scared of everybody I'm afraid we have to stop here it's really pity maybe there will be a chance to answer some more questions later on maybe to the comments associated with the YouTube transmission I would like to thank all our distinguished guests for being here with us today it was really fascinating for me it was pure pleasure to moderate this session and I would like to ask now Jan Piasecki who wanted to say something at the end of our session so thank you again for your presence for excellent talks and for all the food for fault and now I would like to ask Jan to take the screen thank you very much again thank you, thank you very much because this is our last English session so I just wanted to take this opportunity to say goodbye to our all English only speaking viewers and everyone of course who speaks Polish in the next Polish session and I also thank all our speakers and all our moderators session moderators and the questions moderators I want to particularly thankful and grateful and I want to express these feelings towards free persons and therefore I want to thank Mr Kamil Mikulski from the Kosciuszko Institute who helped us especially at the conception with the conception of this of this conference, thank you and the second person that I would like to thank is Mr Aleksander Kulesza-Milewski who is the owner of the ECCT platform who share with us this platform free of charge and who was also our technical support during this conference with Zoom and so on and I also want to thank Miss Agnieszka Lempart who is our administrative manager and let's say her organizational skills were really instrumental for this event so without her probably we wouldn't be able to organize this event so thank you once again and we see each other in around 10 minutes on the Polish session so bye-bye thank you very much bye thank you bye