Snoops

• Author(s): Nassar, Ema ; Lopes, Beatriz ; Marques, Gonçalo
• Date: 2020
• Origin: User Experience & Urban Creativity Journal
• Document Type: Journal article
• Language: English

Description

Ideally, when hearing a political speech or reading a news article, we would be able to trust it and know that the information conveyed was factual and trustworthy, devoid of any partiality. In reality, this doesn't always happen. The information itself might not be entirely incorrect but the way it's delivered can suggest something false or mislead the receiver. The problem described is Post-Truth, and this way of manipulation is unexpected since it can come from any person and the most diverse platforms, bringing some severe consequences. The distorted information shapes the thoughts and opinions of everyone who consumes it and ultimately can influence society's development from the moment politics are shaped by manipulated data. Post-Truth can only take place in a society where there is a lack of education towards critical thinking. This enables mainly political personalities to push their agendas employing different techniques of discourse and mixing factual with erroneous information, making it difficult to tell them apart. Finally, this issue is not simple to solve since there is a fine line between information selection and censorship. Therefore, we believe that the answer to this problem is never to reduce the information available to the public but to increase it and make it easily accessible for everyone, that way when a piece of information arises, each person can double-check it with other sources and authors and make an informed decision to believe it or not. Our project consists of an app that tracks and collects all the information the user is exposed to throughout the day, such as informal conversations and interactions, visited websites, and news articles shared. Then, the app will rate the information on a scale from one to ten according to a number of criteria that determines if it is trustworthy. Moreover, the app compiles various sources about every subject apprehended to complement and further clarify the data absorbed by the user.