SEOUL, South Korea — For two months, six journalists and media literacy trainers from Maldita.es — a Madrid, Spain-based nonprofit fact-checking platform — traveled to 20 rural towns across Spain, teaching older people media literacy and online safety skills.
Polling data has long shown that, in Spain, older people report that they often encounter disinformation but feel they lack the skills to identify it or protect themselves from it, said Clara Jiménez Cruz, CEO and co-founder at Maldita.es.
Maldita wanted to provide media literacy education to older people outside of major Spanish metropolitan areas and reach a “very offline community” who wouldn’t encounter fact-checking work online, Jiménez Cruz said. And so, the BuloBús — which translates as “HoaxBus” — project was born.
Jiménez Cruz spoke about the BuloBús to hundreds of fact-checkers, researchers and others during a June 28 session of GlobalFact, the world’s largest fact-checking summit in Seoul, South Korea, hosted by the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute and SNUFactCheck.
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Funded as a Google News Initiative pilot project, the BuloBús undertook a 20-stop route against disinformation in April and May. Jiménez Cruz said the project was a learning experience, and she shared key insights about what worked and what didn’t during her GlobalFact presentation.
At each stop, the Maldita team worked long days broken into two parts, Jiménez Cruz explained.
A staff member of fact-checking platform Maltida.es speaks to residents of a Spanish town during its BuloBús, or “HoaxBus” project to teach media literacy. Credit: Luis Soto
The morning featured an information stand in the local town square. Maldita’s journalists and media literacy trainers spoke directly with residents, answering their questions about disinformation and teaching them how to use Maldita’s WhatsApp tip line to get reliable, fact-checked information. The BuloBús team passed out materials with large, easy-to-read type that was specially designed to be more accessible to older people.
Then, in the afternoon, the Maldita team performed a disinformation theater play in the town square.
The bus tour happened just before an election in Spain, so the team stayed away from contentious political topics and focused on scams.
“Everyone is affected by scams,” Jiménez Cruz said. “And scams are a good example to actually train media literacy skills.”
She said the training included the very basics, such as “why would the internet contain lies?” and “how do you use WhatsApp?”
In total, Maldita’s BuloBús reached 1,900 people over age 65. During the bus tour, the BuloBús team also provided media literacy training for nearly 500 students at local high schools.
The bus — and media coverage from highly trusted local outlets — also successfully helped Maldita build trust and name recognition among people who live outside of Spain’s major metropolitan areas, Jiménez Cruz said. Maldita saw 1,700 new tip line users from the project.
Clara Jiménez Cruz, CEO and co-founder at Maldita.es, tells attendees at the GlobalFact 10 fact-checking conference about the group’s BuloBús project to educate older residents of more rural areas in Spain about media literacy and scams. Credit: Madison Czopek
“It’s wonderful. I would do this project every year,” Jiménez Cruz told Poynter. “I traveled with the bus to three locations, and it was so beautiful to see, so magical, listening to the conversations that the team was having with the people.”
She said some of the people who approached the BuloBús team to learn more information shared their stories about scams or misinformation they had encountered online.
“It’s a very beautiful project,” she said. But Jiménez Cruz said that the BuloBús project is like any other project, and the first attempt included mistakes and was a learning experience.
One of the early lessons was about language: The BuloBús team had initially introduced its effort by talking about media literacy and outreach to elderly people in rural areas.
Some people took offense at the terms elderly and rural, because even towns of fewer than 40,000 are often large and more urban. Others misunderstood the meaning of media literacy and thought the BuloBús educators were trying to teach them how to read, Jiménez Cruz said.
In response, the BuloBús team pivoted. Rather than mention rural areas, they explained that the BuloBús was visiting places that don’t often have the resources to invite Maldita journalists for education purposes, Jiménez Cruz said. They stopped talking about media literacy, and instead discussed the specific ways older people encounter misinformation in their daily lives.
The team said things like, “You probably feel a bit anxious sometimes when you have to confront scams or misinformation arriving on your phone. This happens to everyone, and here are some tips that you can benefit from,” Jiménez Cruz recounted.
Once it took steps to avoid sounding patronizing, the BuloBús was largely well-received by locals at its stops, Jiménez Cruz said.
Residents ask questions at an information station in their town square set up as part of the BuloBús (or HoaxBus) project from Spanish fact-checking platform Maltida.es. The bus tour helped educate about 1,900 residents. Credit: Luis Soto.
But Maldita’s bus tour announcement, which included the dates and locations of the tour bus stops, triggered online backlash.
When the BuloBús was first announced, it triggered threats from radical groups and from conspiracy theorist groups, including comments like, “torch the bus” and “25 liters of gas,” Jiménez Cruz said.
The threats were serious and Maldita reported them to the authorities, she said. Maldita’s management team was concerned and considered canceling the BuloBús tour. But the BuloBús team wanted to go forward, so the project proceeded while carefully monitoring the threats and having local police present at each stop.
Conspiracy theorists organized online, and at the BuloBús’ first stop, people showed up with signs to protest Maldita’s efforts, Jiménez Cruz said. At some locations, there were enough protesters present that the bus team was unable to go ahead with its scheduled program.
“When it’s two or three people, it’s OK,” Jiménez Cruz told Poynter. “When it’s 17, it doesn’t make any sense, because they’re reaching the people in the town square before you reach them with their disinformation.”
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Jiménez Cruz said they were also concerned that conspiracy theorists were meeting up and getting to know each other, while simultaneously preventing the BuloBús team from reaching the townspeople.
“We decided to change the dates, but not make it public,” she explained. “We were willing to serve the people in the town, and it didn’t matter to them whether they knew when we were going to show up or not.”
After making that change, the BuloBús was able to continue its route as planned.
Jiménez Cruz said that Maldita chose where to stop the BuloBús by looking for towns in each of Spain’s 17 regions with populations of fewer than 40,000 people that also had more than 15-30% people over age 65.
Logistically, Jiménez Cruz said the hardest part was getting local permits to set up a bus, information stand and theater play in the middle of town. It was difficult to find dates that worked for the BuloBús team that the town didn’t already have a market or other event. Planning for the April and May bus tour began in September.
She said the project was time-consuming and expensive, and added that it’s important to pick a team of people who are up to this sort of task, because it is a long and tiring project.
“They came back and said it was like a summer camp, we were together 24/7 for two months,” she said of the BuloBús team. “They’re your coworkers, but if they’re your friends it might work better — or they will become your friends after a while.”
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