Das fake news às deepfakes: percepções de professores de uma escola da rede estadual de ensino em Salvador/BA

Abstract

Fake news emerge as a strategic resource for intensifying informational conflicts, functioning as an instrument that fosters ideological polarization and promotes intentional misinformation in society. This phenomenon is used to tarnish the reputation of institutions and individuals, as well as to disseminate narratives that favor groups aiming to maintain their political hegemony and perpetuate themselves in power. Given the constant advancement and improvement of digital technologies, the production and dissemination of texts with false information represent only the initial stage of the fake news phenomenon. From this perspective, deepfakes emerge as an evolution of this manipulation of reality, enabling the sophisticated creation of altered videos, photographs, and audio recordings, making it even more challenging to distinguish what is real from what is fabricated. In this context, this research aims to understand how high school teachers in a public school in Salvador perceive fake news and deepfakes. Based on the central research question—“How do high school teachers in a public school in Salvador perceive fake news and deepfakes?”—three specific objectives are outlined: to problematize the relationship between fake news, deepfakes, and education; to identify teachers' perceptions of these misinformation practices; to analyze teachers' perceptions of fake news and deepfakes. The theoretical framework is based on authors such as Wardle (2016, 2017); Santaella (2010, 2018, 2021, 2023); Gomes and Dourado (2019); and Gomes (2020). Methodologically, this is a qualitative study structured as a case study, following the guidelines of Yin (2014). The methodological procedures include: a state-of-knowledge review (Morosini, 2014, 2015, 2021) on fake news and deepfakes in education; the application of a mixed online questionnaire to investigate teachers' perceptions of the topic; semi-structured interviews, allowing for an in- depth exploration of participants' responses; content analysis, based on the framework proposed by Bardin (2011), to interpret the collected data. Among the findings, it was observed that teachers have a broad understanding of fake news, but few demonstrate a deep comprehension of the evolution of this phenomenon with the advent of deepfakes. Moreover, most teachers do not address the topic in their pedagogical activities. The reasons for this lack of discussion in the classroom remain gaps to be explored in future research.