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As consumers, there are still many occasions when we are faced with situations of ‘information asymmetry’: situations in which there are substantial differences between the information held by those providing a particular service or selling a particular product, and the information that reaches the consumer. Researcher Ana Clara Azevedo de Amorim has been studying these asymmetries and how advertising may, or may not, mitigate them. She joins ‘Estados do Tempo’ to explain the importance of the quality of advertising information in consumer protection mechanisms.

Mental health issues and disorders require solutions tailored to each specific case. This is why off-the-shelf solutions or stories designed to sell a product (rather than based on scientific knowledge), shared by influencers, can pose additional risks. Similarly, for example, the lack of transparency regarding the sources of information on which Artificial Intelligence tools base their advice. In a conversation with Pedro Morgado, a researcher at ICVS and lecturer at the UMinho School of Medicine, we discussed the difficulties in communicating about mental health and how this field intersects with the health sciences, biological sciences and social sciences.

Catarina Santos, a journalist at Rádio Renascença, is the guest on the seventh episode of the Estados do Tempo podcast. She is the author of some of the finest journalistic work produced in Portugal on the refugee crises caused by major geopolitical conflicts. The quality of current journalism on global conflicts and the fact that, for decades, international news has been relegated to the background in the Portuguese media’s news priorities are the main topics of the conversation, moderated by Luís Miguel Loureiro, also a journalist and member of the BIP team – Barometer for the Quality of Information at the University of Minho.

The intersections between media literacy, information quality and misinformation are the focus of this episode of Estados do Tempo. Should we attribute to media literacy, a property of audiences, the weight of a vaccine against misinformation? In this episode, Pedro Moura, a research fellow at the Communication and Society Research Centre, talks to us about media literacy, the importance of finding a balance between listening to and challenging audiences, and listening as a form of participation.