Overcoming Post-truth Challenges: Is journalism education successful in Ukraine?

Abstract

The article discusses the response efficiency of the journalism education system to the post-truth challenges. The aim of our research is to find out whether the higher education system of Ukraine is able to provide the media system with quality professional staff ready for political participation, responsibility and upholding democratic values in the conditions of post-truth and aggressive external information influence. The experiment covered three groups: journalism students with general professional training, journalism students, who additionally participated in fact-checking trainings and economics students, who did not study the basics of media literacy. The survey results and focus group discussion proved that the future journalists show greater confidence in their skills, but, in fact, they are not able to distinguish better truth, manipulation and lies than the future economists All three groups had vague ideas about these concepts and tend to trust statements that seem familiar and simple. Fact-checking trainings do not give students an advantage in identifying truth and lies in public statements. The results suggest an urgent need to find new system solutions on the part of higher education, the community of professionals to train future journalists ready to work in the post-truth conditions.