In Sweden, March 13 has in several years marked Källkritikens Dag – or Source Criticism Day in English. The tradition was established by Viralgranskaren, which was a precursor to NORDIS partner Källkritikbyrån. The marking of Source Criticism Day has since spread to other Nordic countries with NORDIS.
In the Nordic countries, source criticism is an important part of school education and the purpose of Source Criticism Day is to highlight the importance of being critical of information and learning how to navigate an ever-changing information landscape. Perhaps more important than ever.
Source criticism is basically about questioning the information one is presented with. Where does the information come from? Who is the sender? What is the purpose of sharing the information?
In keeping with tradition, Source Criticism Day features a variety of events across the Nordic countries. NORDIS has gathered some of them here, hosted by both NORDIS partners and others.
We wish you a happy Source Criticism Day!
What is happening?
Internetstiftelsen and Källkritikbyrån are giving out the award The Golden Magnifying Glass to persons or organisations that have done extraordinary work for source criticism online this year.
Källkritikens dag has been a national day in Sweden for the last nine years and always brings a lot of activities. This year a lot of schools and libraries around the country are planning different events on Källkritikens dag. A selection of other things going on: Bildlärarnas Riksförening, the Association for Arts Teachers, are calling on all their teachers to focus on visual literacy in connection to this day and the children’s channel Barnradion in the Public Service Radio Sveriges Radio has posted listening tips in advance of the 13th. The city of Malmö is bringing attention to “källtillit” – source trust – in connection to the day and the Museum in Falbygden has a special showing of the exhibit Propaganda – the risk of influence.
NORDIS partner Faktabaari organizes two workshops on 13.3. for teenagers in collaboration with upper secondary schools. In the FACTA-hack workshops participants learn about fact-checking methods and gain tools to verify images, videos, claims, and AI-generated content in a playful and entertaining way. More about the concept for STOP, THINK and CHECK here.
More information on the major Faktabaari Forum public event “How can we strengthen citizens’ information resilience in the age of artificial intelligence, as elections approach?” (in Finnish) on April fool’s day 1.4.
In Norway ‘Tenk’ which is a part of NORDIS partner Faktisk.no, is hosting a full-day conference on March 12 for Source Criticism Day. Tenk has brought together a range of partners, including Deichman Oslo Public Library, Nordic Safe Cities, and the National Library of Norway. The programme on stage will be unique and highly varied, approaching the topic from multiple perspectives. It will include everything from educational research and panel discussions on democracy and AI, to image verification from the war in Iran, a live podcast, and a lecture on critical reading.
Tenk has also developed new resources about information and information search. These resources cover different search techniques that young people use everyday, including how to narrow searches in the browser, evaluate search results, use AI for searching, and conduct reverse image searches. The materials include videos and a range of different activities
The Danish Nordis partner TjekDet is hosting a webinar on 13 March exploring how generative AI is entering democratic conversations during election campaigns. As Denmark approaches its parliamentary election on 24 March, voters are not only encountering political messages in debates, traditional media and social platforms. Increasingly, they may also turn to chatbots for guidance about political choices. The discussion will focus on questions such as how chatbots generate political answers, what kinds of biases or mechanisms shape those responses, and what the implications could be for democratic decision-making. The conversation will also draw on the new TjekDet educational material “Hey Chat… Who Should I Vote For?” – for upper secondary schools to strengthen students’ understanding of prompting, misinformation and source criticism in relation to AI. Read more here.