In an increasingly connected country, some of Brazil’s older adults still face difficulties navigating the digital environment. Lack of familiarity with apps, insecurity when using social media and dependence on family members to solve simple tasks are challenges that add to misinformation. In this context, media literacy emerges as a tool for inclusion and citizenship for people over 60, especially when attempted fraud against older adults in Brazil increased by almost 12% last year.
Held for the first time in August and September, the course "You in Control," a partnership between Brazilian fact-checking outlet Agência Lupa, the Federal Fluminense University (UFF, for its initials in Portuguese), and the Niterói City Hall in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, is one of the rare media literacy initiatives specifically aimed at older adults in Brazil.
For two months, 30 people over the age of 60 gathered in a classroom in the city of Niterói to learn something their families often don’t have the patience to teach: how to critically navigate the digital environment, identify misinformation and protect themselves from online scams.
"There's a social perception that older adults are less important than other groups you need to offer literacy programs to, like children and teenagers, when in fact that's not true," Victor Terra, a journalist from Lupa who taught the course, told the LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). "These people also have the right to access information, to have the autonomy to navigate, to use technologies, to be in digital environments. It's not a favor, it's a right that these people have and that is often denied to them."
Lupa has wanted to work with this audience for years, but faced challenges reaching them.
"The audience is difficult to reach via social media," Raphael Kapa, education coordinator at Agência Lupa, told LJR. "They need to be reached through more traditional means."
The solution came when UFF professor Adriana Barsotti established a partnership with the Municipal Secretariat for Older Adults of Niterói and invited the fact-checking agency to participate in customizing the content.
“It was a happy coincidence of interests because I wanted to do a project related to older adults, and Lupa also had that desire,” Barsotti told LJR. “The literature that has already researched these initiatives for older adults shows that they are generally very utilitarian: how to use the banking app, how to plan a trip, how to buy a ticket. And the initiatives don't tend to empower older adults to have a sense of citizenship, to actively participate in social life.”
Initially, the course was planned to include five classes and was more focused on media literacy and combating misinformation. However, the project organizers realized they would need to adapt the plan to meet the needs and different education and digital literacy levels of the participants.
“There were people who didn’t know how to send a photo to their child,” Kapa said. “That’s not the purpose of the course, but we gave a final lesson on the more technical aspects because we understand that digital education for this population is also a way to combat misinformation, a form of media literacy, because they avoid using the device for fear of making a mistake.”
Among the students were people who were unable to read or write, as well as participants with more advanced education. Course participants asked questions such as how algorithms work and why each person is impacted by different content. In the end, the course ended up having six classes: three focused on fake news, two on scams and a final more technical class.
"We realized that it's pointless to try to combat misinformation if they aren't equipped with the digital tools to do so," Barsotti said. "Both Lupa and I were willing to take those steps back and truly teach this digital literacy, these first steps in the digital world, so that we could achieve the objectives by the end of the course."
Terra said the media literacy content was adapted to suit standards used in activities with older adults. They used concrete examples related to that population’s daily lives, such as cases of digital scams, activities involving banking institutions, and so-called miracle drugs. The teaching material was also adapted to have larger fonts, contrast between the background of the slide screen, and the content, and data presented in a more simplified way, so that the information would be more tangible.
“Everything we adapted from a content standpoint was to make them interested and identify with the situations,” Terra said. “Another point was to use material with plenty of images and a little less text, so that we wouldn’t overload the learning process with too much information and end up being counterproductive throughout the course.”
For the section on fake news, the focus was on teaching how to identify misinformation and also how to verify the information they receive. During the classes, participants were taught how to check real examples of misinformation circulating on messaging apps and social media.
“For example, we would show them misinformation and they would check if it was on the person's official Instagram or Twitter accounts, if there was an official statement on the matter. But there was a limitation because they didn't have computers; it was very much done on their cell phones, in the palm of their hand,” Kapa said. “We wanted to at least show the idea that if you are receiving something about a certain candidate, a certain government, and so on, be suspicious and try to look for it in official sources.”
Regarding fraud, Terra said that in one of the classes he simulated a scam where a con artist pretends to be a family member to ask the victim for money, in order to teach security measures.
"We practiced this together in a controlled environment so they could learn how to report and block a contact on WhatsApp,” he explained.
Terra also included the concept of clickbait content so that they could identify misleading content about supposedly miraculous products and remedies.
“This is the kind of content that resonated with the students themselves: ‘I’ve seen this kind of content before, I almost bought eye drops for glaucoma, I almost spent my money on anti-inflammatory ointment for osteoarthritis,’” Terra said. “Things involving medication were quite common.”
The course also addressed how social media algorithms work in an accessible way. Colored cards (green, yellow and red) made the discussions visual and participatory. A WhatsApp group was created as a safe space for practice and questions.
"We would present some content and ask what they thought, is it true, false, is it a scam, right? And then they would raise their cards," Barsotti said. "We would tell them: 'You don't need to be afraid or ashamed to share any content [in the WhatsApp group]. The group is for that. If you have any doubts about any content and want to consult us, the group will always be there for that purpose.'"
Barsotti said the most significant result appeared outside the classroom, with the change in the participants' attitudes. She said that over the weekend she received messages in that WhatsApp group containing false information and questions about how the information could be verified.
“They weren’t asking, ‘Oh, is this true or false?’ They were asking, ‘How do I find out?’,” Barsotti said. “That question was a game-changer. It sparked in them the desire to actually find out for themselves. Otherwise, we would always be a crutch. We would be their portable fact-checkers. And what we really wanted was for them to have this active, not passive, stance.”
Kapa received similar feedback when he contacted a student after class ended, and she, suspicious, asked him to send an audio message to make sure it was really him.
“She turned around and said, ‘I asked you to speak because I learned that maybe it’s not Raphael, maybe it’s not Victor.’ We created monsters,” he joked. “She understood that many times someone can be pretending to be someone else. That’s the main thing: to have doubts.”
The experience yielded concrete lessons on how to structure media literacy education for this audience. For future editions, the idea is to maintain in-person classes, incorporate technical lessons and structure modules by knowledge level.
"It has to be in person, it has to be with a cell phone, and it has to cater to different education levels," Kapa said. "We understood that the audience is not homogeneous. We also understand that the next step is to have a more technical course, because learning the basics may seem merely technical, but for a portion of this population it is literally having access to true information. And to keep the course more analytical, because the platforms will change, the applications will change."
The pilot's success generated spontaneous demand across the country. The challenge now is to scale the model while maintaining its essential characteristics.
"We published a series of videos about the course and started receiving comments and also DMs, emails from government departments, other places, city halls, third-sector organizations, and the general public," Terra said. "There is a huge demand and still very little supply of this type of initiative."
Alongside the Lupa and UFF courses, other similar initiatives are beginning to emerge in the country. A recent project offers in-person workshops where journalists teach older adults to recognize misinformation "one WhatsApp message at a time," focusing on everyday practices and real-life examples. Like "Você no Controle,” the proposal stems from the idea that media literacy among older adults also promotes autonomy and digital citizenship.
