4.1.5. Referendum on Immigrant Rights

4.1.5. Referendum on Immigrant Rights

Type Objectives

Duration Group size Materials

Description

Debriefing & Reflection

Learning

Simulation, debate, role-playing, group discussion

Realise the impact and ease of creation of fake news; Reflect on unequal representation of news by the media and stakeholders with hidden agendas. 1h

15-20 participants Printed roles, a voting box and different rooms or sufficient space so that the groups can discuss independently. Facilitators spend 5 minutes to explain the rules and delegate the roles. There are 4 different groups: Politicians in favour of X; Politicians against X; Journalists of a big TV station (with opinions based against X); Equal number of citizens in favour, against or neutral of X (X is the topic of the Referendum). Politicians have 10 minutes to prepare their political campaigns, the media to prepare their broadcast (one will visit the politician again and the other will take some interviews from citizens) and the citizens discuss their views based on the roles with each other (role-playing). The media then does a small report on the situation. After that, the political parties have 5 minutes each to present their points. Then there are questions from citizens. After that voting commences. Media announces the results and finishes the role-playing. Then, the participants proceed to discuss:

How was the experience?

How did you feel that you had to take on this extreme role?

Who changed the vote of his persona? What made you change your opinion?

Did the political opinions stated seem like true information? When they have discussed enough, the participants move to more open questions and motivate sharing for the conclusion. Why don’t we speak up? Do you understand the model? What is your take on it? Do you recognise these states of past experiences now that you were introduced to the model?

outcomes

Additional comments

Resources

Communicating in a mother tongue: how easily words can be manipulated to get someone’s point across

Digital competence: Experiential learning on the impact of fake news

Learning to learn: Reflecting on why certain information is more convincing than others,

Social and civic competences: Experiential learning on the ways fake news are spread and their impact Doing a team oriented activity before this one, like the Scales of Cooperation, helps set the stage of doing a complex group activity without having negative side effects that happen because of heated discussion or inappropriate social interactions. For the activity to be successful, the group must be willing to actively participate in all stages of it, as well as accept to role-play the specific role they were assigned. Lastly, the group must participate and pay attention to the debriefing after the activity so they realise the key outcomes of the simulation.