Between 2018-2022, the Brazilian government showed little interest in denying or clarifying fake news in their official communications. Instead, most of the times, they relied on the use of Twitter bots and niche WhatsApp/Telegram groups to spread a government-centric narrative that was often exaggerated beyond reality. This led to a period of intense fake news warfare.

Despite their best efforts to deny and fact-check the overwhelming amount of fake news, it was still a struggle to provide accurate information to the public. Recognizing the severity of the situation, the digital newspaper "Plural" approached us with a challenge: to come up with an idea that could effectively tackle this awful trend in journalism.

After careful consideration, we realized that it would be unwise to attempt to address each and every false claim that emerged online. Instead, we decided to focus on the narrative elements that often made fake news so enticing: fiction and fantasy. That's when we came up with the "Festival Jacaré", a literary contest that aimed to put fiction back in its rightful place and promote the power of storytelling. Making fiction, fiction again.

The only rule of the contest was to generate an interesting fiction tale based in some of the latest fake news going around in the internet. We received all the material from a website and announced the winners at June the 30th, 2022

https://www.plural.jor.br/jacare/