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The opening of the academic year at New Bulgarian University, Source: НБУ фото on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 with added logos and title

Read Twice goes local: The first university training against fake news takes place in Sofia

Read Twice goes local: The first university training against fake news takes place in Sofia

Stage two: Bulgarian media professionals seek to boost media literacy in their home country with skills they've acquired in Germany and Portugal

On 18 April, the Read Twice project will hold the first of its several educational trainings, as part of its mission to tackle online disinformation and gaps in media literacy. The mentors, young media professionals from Bulgaria, will lead the session at the New Bulgarian University in the capital city of Sofia.

The educational workshop is titled ‘Right to information and free speech: Disinformation in the age of digital media’ and it will focus on what project participants have learned in Porto and Berlin from experts of Alliance4Europe, LUSOFONA University, Der Spiegel, Publico and Deutsche Welle among others.

Spreading experience

Read Twice is a project funded by the EU’s C.E.R.V. programme (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values) and aims to spread media literacy and anti-disinfo practices from countries in the EU, which are more experienced in handling disinformation issues and have more robust media culture, to countries which are still searching for better ways to resist disinformation.

In particular, the project wants to develop and train 30 young media professionals from Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, three countries that rank among the lowest in terms of media literacy, according to the 2021 Media Literacy Index, published by the Open Society Foundation.

Now that the initial capacity-building activities are complete, these professionals will spread their new experience to their peers in their home countries, through special training sessions in local universities.

The event at the New Bulgarian University

As a first step, students will have a chance to learn how social media contributes to the spread of harmful content and who has a vested interest in the spread of fake news. Moreover, the training will also focus on the effects of disinformation on human rights, including the right to be informed.

Additionally, the training team will introduce the public to some of the most effective contemporary instruments for detecting false information, including Crowd Tangle, the DISARM Framework and Public Editor.

These can be used at a variety of levels, be they institutional, professional, or even personal.

Similar events are scheduled to take place at Sofia University, Bulgaria, in Zagreb (Croatia) and Bucharest (Romania).

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