Learning the latest: Empowering the media and readers through technological innovation Donor: Transition Promotion Program of the Czech Foreign Ministry
Learning the latest: Empowering the media and readers through technological innovation
Overall Objective:
The overall aim of this project is to boost the professionalism of online journalism in Georgia in order to contribute to a more free and independent press.
Partners: Georgian Institute of Public Affairs
Specific Objectives
- To improve access of Georgian citizens to quality online information by improving service and content of the independent media;
- to improve the ability of independent journalists in Georgia to identify disinformation campaigns and report on them, countering, especially, fake news;
- to introduce information verification and disinformation countering skills into curricula of local universities and raise awareness of journalism students and high school students about the importance of information verification – thus building a solid foundation for the improvement of media sector resilience in the long run.
Activities
- Participation of Georgian journalists in journalism training in Prague for skills exchange;
- Newsroom placement/fellowship, where two selected participants receive a placement within a European media newsroom where they will familiarize themselves with new skills (e.g. data journalism);
- Content production on issues of societal importance in Georgia;
- Solutions Journalism training;
- Solutions Journalism stipends where two journalists per year will receive a stipend to realise a solutions story;
- Publication of Solutions Journalism articles;
- Hackathon is organized in Georgia bringing together representatives of the media and the IT community to investigate on major pieces of disinformation in Georgia;
- Organize and hold data verification school to improve reliability of content and trustworthiness of media;
- Individual hands-on coaching of trainees to deliver two major investigations into fakes generated in Georgian media sphere;
- Introduction of media monitoring approaches in Georgia to identify disinformation distribution strategies;
- Training of Trainers of the lecturers;
- Training of students;
- Introduction of media monitoring approaches in Georgian universities;
- Roundtables with teachers;
- Training of high school students; and
- Localization of content.
Course for media educators and journalism students
What happened: In a partnership with the GIPA Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management, we offered the certified course “Trust, Social Data, and Media” for media educators and journalism students between 10-18 December.
How it worked:
- Sessions were led by experts Fergus Bell, Ivan Godarsky, Henk van Ess, John Cook, and Jaroslav Valuch, news literacy and fact-checking program manager at Transitions.
- We had an average of 25 participants throughout the sessions.
- The course covered topics such as the mis/disinformation ecosystem and how to respond and write about it, social media monitoring, internet research with open sources, and fact-checking practices
For more information about TOL’s other current projects, please click here.