Colombia offers a solution to the world: critical thinking against disinformation

During the third edition of EduMedia, it became clear that today’s information ecosystem has grown more complex, aggressive, and overwhelming. Staying well-informed is no longer easy. What used to be a democratic virtue is now a source of anxiety, division, and manipulation.

Disinformation is no longer limited to isolated fake news. It’s a sophisticated strategy that erodes trust, radicalizes opinions, reinforces biases, and weakens critical thinking. It spreads through digital platforms designed to favor speed, virality, and instant reaction over understanding and thoughtful analysis.

There are no magical or individual solutions to this. I echo the conclusions of the event: we need critical thinking, media literacy, and — above all — collaboration across sectors. That was the core message of EduMedia 2025: to stop working in silos and start building collective solutions, especially at a time when we’re not only facing disinformation, but also the “hallucinations” of artificial intelligence — challenges that require us to be better prepared.

But is it really possible to strengthen critical thinking in polarized contexts like Colombia?

Yes. And there’s evidence to prove it.

In 2022, at Detox Information Project (DIP), we designed simple but powerful interventions: videos capturing real conversations between people from opposite political views, reflecting together on how they think, decide, and get informed. We also included tests that reveal automatic thinking biases.

We ran an online experiment with 2,235 participants during Colombia’s presidential elections. The results were recently published in PNAS Nexus, one of the world’s most respected scientific journals, edited by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

What did we find?

• People who watched the video were 30.3% less likely to believe false news.

• There was a significant reduction in political dehumanization toward those who think differently.

• Participants who received both the video and the test were 15% more willing to report non-political disinformation.

The intervention activated critical thinking: encouraging people to question, pause, reassess beliefs, and update ideas. Instead of imposing answers, we encouraged better questions. Because the problem isn’t just the information that circulates — it’s how we consume it and how we decide what to do with it.

Along this journey, DIP has shown that we can defend ourselves. Since 2021, we’ve reached over 134,000 people across Colombia with tools rooted in behavioral science, evidence, communication, and innovation to reduce vulnerability to disinformation.

And in 2024, we took a step further: we launched Jóvenes Líderes DIP — a national network of youth aged 15 to 28 who are training to confront disinformation from within their communities, lead with their own voice, and amplify the impact of their social causes. These are young people already working on mental health, climate action, political participation, or human rights, who now have concrete tools to communicate with evidence, challenge polarizing narratives, and mobilize toward possible solutions.

This initiative — supported by Grupo SURA and led by ETHOS BT — is built on two key principles:

• Democracy isn’t strengthened by institutions alone: it’s strengthened by critical citizens.

• Media literacy isn’t an academic luxury. It’s a democratic necessity.

And all of this confirms something important: it’s not enough to identify the problem. We must design solutions that are applicable, contextual, and collaborative. If we continue debating in isolation, without aligning sectors, experiences, and knowledge, we’ll keep losing ground in the fight against disinformation.

But if we come together — through journalism, education, science, politics, and civil society — we can build a more critical, resilient, and informed public. And DIP is a solution born in Colombia, backed by evidence, and delivering results that we must take to many more Colombians.

🔗 We invite you to read the full article in PNAS Nexus:https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae361

📩 Interested in bringing these tools to your community, classroom, network, team, or territory? Write to us. The best way to confront disinformation is to get prepared — together.hola@somosdip.com