Media and value based conflicts exchange
Hotel Jump Inn, Belgrade, Serbia, March 27-28, 2018
How media (traditional and social) influence conflicts in society? How media report about the conflicts based on values? Are they part of the problem or could they be a solution? How hate speech in the media influence society?
The Media Diversity Institute Western Balkans and PDCS invite you to attend the Media and Value based conflicts exchange, to be held in Belgrade, 27-28 March.
Populism and extremism are becoming increasingly present across Europe. Some of the European countries are hardly seen as democratic anymore, because they lean more and more towards right wing populism and normalizing discriminatory discourses in the public sphere. In some of the countries governments are increasingly controlling the traditional media.
Social media are crammed with antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, anti-migration narratives – hate targeting ‘the others’. IT companies, civil society and other stakeholders are taking actions – some right some questionable; an example of the latter being a recent changes of Facebook news feed which directly affect the visibility of counter-narratives from civil society. Yet, regardless of how right the actions are they seem not able yet to outtalk the ‘haters’.
Is there more we could do about the online hate speech? Could the media step in and fight for democratic values of equality, inclusion and respect of basic human rights?
The exchange is organised as part of the process of building European Network for Non-violence and Dialog (ENND) initiated by the PDCS. In ENND we focus on conflicts that currently attract attention of European media and public hence steer public discussions, opinions and form values among citizens. We aim to create a functional movement/network (ENND) of civic actors interested in peaceful interventions in current value based conflicts in the CEE region. We together believe in much stronger voice of joined forces of likeminded individuals and organizations who share European values and nonviolent approach. The purpose is learning from each other, collecting tested conflict intervention approaches, supporting each other’s interventions, and organizing public campaigns promoting common goals and values.
The aim of the Belgrade event is to discuss the role of media in current (and past) conflicts across Europe and to initiate conversation on potential solutions.
The exchange will gather individual experts and civil society representatives from Europe to discuss how media influence conflicts in society, evaluate the situation in different parts of Europe, comparing and brainstorming the solutions.
We invite experienced individuals or CSO representatives in this topic willing to share their knowledge / good practice with each other. We also encourage participants interested in organizing presentations about the best practice examples or interactive workshops related to the topics of the conference.
APPLICATION:
Due to the limited number of places, attentive participants are kindly asked to fill in this form. Deadline for submission: 28 February 2018
We will notify successful applicants by 5 March 2018.
For more information please contact Ivana Jelaca ivana.jelaca@media-diversity.org
Travel and accommodation costs for successful participants are covered by organisers.