Exam (elaborations) CRITICAL THINKING IN MEDIA SPHERE

The article aims to determine how university professors critically perceive and evaluate information when interacting with the media sphere. The study's relevance is due to the insufficient elaboration of Russian teachers' attitude to the information in the media sphere. which is significant in developing students' critical thinking. The study analyzes theoretical sources and documents on critical thinking in the media sphere and the results of processing empirical data obtained from questioning teachers. The main measuring instrument is a questionnaire survey of university professors with various lengths of service. The study involved 76 teachers from Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin. Ural State Pedagogical University (Ekaterinburg, Russia). Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia). The data obtained from the study of the teachers' attitude to the information content of the media sphere show a predominant critical attitude in assessing the reliability and availability of information on social networking platforms. This conclusion is important for personality traits that develop students' critical thinking. Keywords: Critical Thinking, Media Sphere, Higher Education, Media Content, Fake News INTRODUCTION At present the thinking of a professional in various fields should be multifunctional, mobile and varied, analytical, critical, and systematic. Therefore, the universal competence “systems and critical thinking” is of particular importance for developing the education system. The need to develop critical thinking among students is that higher education develops a person's thinking in professional orientation. In the interaction of personality and media content critical thinking allows a person to track how information varies depending on the context in which it is presented. Students actively interact with the media referring to the media as a source of useful and interesting information. Students are often not highly motivated to refer to textbooks. Students are inherently striving for accessible information requiring much effort and time for perception and processing. The same information can be differently emotionally colored and substantiated by different rational arguments. Therefore, the development of students' critical thinking includes clarifying how teachers relate to the functioning of information contained in the media sphere concerning the Fake News phenomenon. Learning decision-making and the moral decision system define human beliefs about what Fake News is how they influence our behavior and choices in many everyday situations. However in teachers of schools colleges and universities this area of belief plays a unique role. Since the teacher presents the media content functioning and Fake News in the media space forms daily didactic choice however it is also assimilated and accepted by students. Consequently the critical pedagogical issue is how the implementation of the teacher's beliefs Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences Volume 24, Special Issue 1, 2021 -S1-189 Citation Information: Shutaleva, A., Martyushev, N., Nikonova, Z., Savchenko, I., Bovkun, A., & Kerimov, A. (2021). Critical thinking in media sphere: Attitude of university teachers to fake news and its impact on the teaching. Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences, 24(S1), 1-12. regarding media content and Fake News in the media space affects a system of representing knowledge in teaching students. The study aims to determine how university professors critically perceive and evaluate information when interacting with the media sphere. The article presents an analysis of theoretical issues of critical thinking in the media sphere and the results of empirical research, Namely a questionnaire survey of teachers. The empirical part of the study interprets the questions about how critical educators are about content in the media space. The questionnaire was attended by teachers from Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, Ural State Pedagogical University (Ekaterinburg, Russia). Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia). The study examines the issues of the attitude of teachers of socio-humanitarian areas to Fake news and whether they are influenced by factors pushing towards an uncritical attitude towards information in the media sphere. The study's relevance is due to the insufficient elaboration of Russian teachers' attitude to the information contained in the media sphere which is significant in developing students' critical thinking. MATERIALS AND METHODS The article is devoted to studying how university professors critically perceive and evaluate information when interacting with the media sphere. The article uses methods of analysis of theoretical issues of critical thinking in the media sphere. Obtaining the empirical part of the research is based on compiling questions conducting questionnaires of teachers. analyzing data. The empirical part of the research is interpreted to study the critical attitude of teachers to media content. The research methods are theoretical analysis of philosophical pedagogical and psychological literature on critical thinking in the media sphere and analysis of the results of processing empirical data midday due to a questionnaire survey of teachers. The main measuring instrument in the study is a questionnaire survey of university professors with various lengths of service. The study involved 76 teachers from Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin. Ural State Pedagogical University (Ekaterinburg. Russia). Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia). The analysis of empirical data was based on an inductive approach. At the first stage of the study the teachers' perceptions of their critical attitude to Fake News in the media space were identified and described. Then the questions for the survey were drawn up considering the identification of teachers' attitudes towards factors that contribute to an uncritical attitude towards media content. The second phase of the study focused on the analysis of the obtained empirical data and conclusions. The presented empirical data is a toolkit for studying the subjective measurement of educational reality. Generalization and designation of the teachers' answers' characteristics become the basis for methodological and practice-oriented conclusions. Key Concepts in Fake News Phenomenon This study is based on many studies that reveal the factors that contribute to the existence of Fake News on social media which contributes to the development of a critical media strategy. Modern people are immersed in the world of information technology which has led to the fact that social media has become a reality for millions of people. The media have reached the level of almost instantaneous reaching of addressees of various age and social groups. There are practically no barriers to the entry of interested individuals into the media industry including creating a website and monetizing web content using advertising platforms (McNair, 2017). This circumstance leads to the need to discuss the existence of the Fake News phenomenon. The development of information technologies leads to the fact that they can positively connect people, for example through social networks. On the other hand information technologies contribute to a manipulative influence on people i.e., negatively connecting people through surveillance, tracking and targeted advertising. The media sphere carries information but also presents the information as desired. i.e., forms desires and thinking patterns (Luhmann, 2000; Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences Volume 24, Special Issue 1, 2021 -S1-189 Citation Information: Shutaleva, A., Martyushev, N., Nikonova, Z., Savchenko, I., Bovkun, A., & Kerimov, A. (2021). Critical thinking in media sphere: Attitude of university teachers to fake news and its impact on the teaching. Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences, 24(S1), 1-12. Fuchs, 2014; McLean, 2016). This means that the media sphere is influenced by the misbehavior of people, their actions. This circumstance exacerbates the issues of media education as a priority for the development of modern education (Kerimov et al., 2020; Tomyuk et al., 2020; Kirillova, 2020). In this regard, the safety of information from the Internet by children. Adolescents and adults is the subject of several studies, which emphasize the importance of implementing large-scale media educational projects (Kokhanaya, 2011; Sukhodolov, 2020). One of the main tasks of higher education is to form students' critical thinking to fulfill professional tasks. Various forms of education are being developed. Modern forms of education include using information and communication technologies directly when conducting offline classes and online classes (Sloman, 2001; Nazarov et al., 2020; Khan et al., 2020). Critical thinking involves a person's ability to work with critical and analytical materials, possession, skills in identifying key ideas in texts, recognition of arguments, use of evidence, and expert testimony. As a result, the development of critical thinking contributes to the formation of academic honesty in students, which is one of the conditions for developing a modern academic and student community (Khan et al., 2020; Eaton, 2020b). Educational researchers agree that critical thinking is o