April De Zen, Veda Adnani and Omid Ettehadi

"“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it,” Jonathan Swift (manufactured) realities is a project created to step out of the status quo and truly evaluate whether our beliefs are based on facts. In order to do this, the team selected six news stories, three true stories, and three stories that were released and later on retracted or debunked by credible news organizations. The increase in conflicting information has fuelled much discussion. ‘Our inability to parse truth from fiction on the Internet is, of course, more than an academic matter. The scourge of “fake news” and its many cousins–from clickbait to “deep fakes” (realistic-looking videos showing events that never happened)–have experts fearful for the future of democracy.’ (Steinmetz, Time Magazine, 2018) The six articles are presented, and after each, the participants will be given a chance to submit a vote on whether they believe it or challenge it. Once all votes are in, the servo device will show the results of the poll as the projector reveals whether the story is true or fraudulent. Once all six questions are answered, we end the exercise on a result page which will show the overall accuracy of the group and also the accuracy of each question."