Implemented in partnership with the Prague-based publisher and media development organization Transition (TOL) between May 2018 and May 2019, the Debunking Misinformation in South East Europe is a project aimed at building local capacity in the region to combat propaganda, disinformation and misinformation circulating in the public sphere.
The project addresses a rapidly increasing presence of false information in the Western Balkan region.
Specific objectives of the project are:
- To provide journalism educators with the background knowledge to understand the motivations and methods behind the spread of propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation and tools to counter them and enable them to transfer that knowledge to journalists and journalism students
- To provide journalists and journalism students with skills and tools to debunk misinformation, disinformation and propaganda
- To further the long-term integration of teaching on debunking misinformation into journalism curricula through outreach to faculty and creation of local language resources that may be used by students and lecturers
Activities:
The project aims to achieve its objectives in the first instance through “training of trainers,” a series of capacity building activities aimed at equipping journalism studies lecturers and established media trainers with knowledge and skills required to effectively debunk falsehoods.
The activities are designed to utilize the position of these trained educators as agents of knowledge and skill transfer.
Through online learning, workshop training and exercise activities, they will work intensively within this project with a substantial number of journalism students and young journalists to embed good journalism practice when it comes to dealing with false information among the most vulnerable, but also most open to learning categories of media professionals.
The intention is for the lecturers and media trainers to incorporate the teaching knowledge and methods from this project into their curricula and wider work with students and other trainees.
The project is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)