Strengthening Democratic Resilience in Georgia

Donor name: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Embassy of the Czech Republic in Georgia

Overall objectives: To contribute to the democratic resilience of Georgian society through raising media literacy and countering foreign influence operations.

Partners: European Values Center for Security Policy (EVC), Transitions Online (TOL), and People in Need (PIN – as Coordinator).

Specific objectives: To enhance the capacity of media consumers of all ages, media producers, and media monitors in Georgia to identify and counter disinformation, ensuring the inclusion of minority communities.

Activities: 

  • Georgian journalists trained by their world-level counterparts in producing cutting edge content appealing to readers and trained in verification skills and identifying disinformation:
  • Data verification school to improve the reliability of content and trustworthiness of media: Two three-day data verification workshops will be held for 15 independent journalists to introduce them to information debunking and working with open sources of information;
  • European newsroom fellowship: Two participants will receive a two-week placement within a European media newsroom where they can acquire new skills (e.g. data journalism), which they can apply back in Georgia.
  • Information verification and disinformation countering skills introduced into curricula of local universities and raise awareness of journalism students about importance of information verification:
  • Training of students in practical information verification skills: Six 1.5-day crunch workshops will be held for students and led by V4/EU experts, delivering practical skills related to information verification and open source investigations (e.g. obtaining open source data in countries with restricted information access, analyzing specific corruption or visual forensics investigations such as the MH17 case) and media literacy.
  • Training of Trainers for university lecturers: 20 lecturers from six universities will be invited to participate in ToT workshops on how to teach disinformation debunking modules, building upon an IVF funded program of university capacity building launched in 2018.
  • Introduction of media monitoring approaches in Georgian universities.