European Media Literacy Week: the EFCSN presents initiatives from Europe’s fact-checking community
To celebrate European Media Literacy Week 2022, the European Fact-checking Standards Network (EFCSN) is highlighting a range of educational initiatives developed by fact-checkers. From online games to podcasts and training courses for students, the diverse group of projects are focused on helping equip the public with the tools to recognise – and refute – false information.
Here is a summary of the various media literacy initiatives European fact-checking organisations have rolled out over the past year:
- Maldita from Spain launched an online Escape Room to raise awareness against the hoaxes that target migrants.
- Les Surligneurs, from France, organized a “legalthon“, an opportunity to question information, to decipher it and to educate the media.
- AFP from France created online courses to teach digital investigation techniques, and a short video format to share tips and examples from the global fact-checking team.
- DEMAGOG from Poland developed workshops aimed at seniors, plus educational podcasts.
- The Media Development Foundation from Georgia conducted a series of media literacy trainings as well as online games and forums.
- Teyit from Turkey collaborated with teachers to achieve integration of critical digital literacy in the education system and prepared a handbook for educators.
- Istinomer from Serbia created short video lessons for its online community called “Fact-checking shortcuts” focused on the fact-checking basics, such as debunking false images and videos and geolocation.
- Faktoje from Albania launched an online campaign to help the wider public identify disinformation through simple tips explained in short videos.
- Zašto ne? and their project Raskrinkavanje from Bosnia and Herzegovina published a series of “prebunking” articles to educate voters on the types of manipulation they were likely to encounter prior to elections and ways to resist it.
- Verificat from Spain launched Media and Information Literacy courses for teachers on a platform to help them identify misinformation.
- Georgia’s Reforms Associates held a series of online/offline Media literacy trainings explaining how to identify and verify disinformation.
- RasKRIKavanje from Serbia analysed the six top-selling Serbian tabloids and exposed over 1000 false news.
- CORRECTIV from Germany founded the Reporterfabrik platform to educate the public about journalism, social media and disinformation. There is a broad range of online courses, for example how to spot “fake news”.
- Faktisk from Norway developed learning/teaching material for classrooms, for example “How do TikTok’s algorithms shape your ‘ForYou’-page?” or “How can you apply media literacy to social media?”.
- Faktabaari from Finland published a Digital Information Literacy Guide, including information about what the public can learn from fact-checkers.
- Newtral from Spain is offering a Master’s Degree in Digital Verification, Fact-Checking and Data Journalism.
- hibrid.info from Kosovo launched the EDU section dedicated to media and digital literacy as well as checkos.info, the first online platform for media literacy in Kosovo. They also organised several trainings in media and digital literacy as well as in digital journalism with young journalists in cooperation with the Faculty of Journalism at the University of Prishtina.
- France 24 The Observers has an experience of 7 years in media literacy initiatives with more than 150 episodes of a section called “Info ou Intox” focused on teaching people how to spot misinformation online.
On Thursday October 27, 2022 most of the organisations above will be chatting about their projects on Twitter Spaces. To listen, set a reminder on your Twitter account:
The European Media Literacy Week , which runs from October 24-28, is an European Commission initiative held in alignment with the Global Media and Information Literacy Week, organised by UNESCO.
The EFCSN project is part of the Call of Integrity of Social Media by the European Commission and is led by six European organisations focused on fighting misinformation: Fundación Maldita.es (Spain), AFP (France), CORRECTIV (Germany), DEMAGOG (Poland), Pagella Politica/ Facta (Italy) and EU DisinfoLab (Belgium).
Follow the EFCSN’s Twitter and LinkedIn for regular updates on this project.