Be Informed Not Disinformed

For the second part of the “Be Informed Not Disinformed” project in Wrocław, Poland, half of the participants from the first part in Slovakia were joined by new faces from Croatia, Slovakia, and Poland, bringing the total to 16 participants.

On the first project day, we again focused on team-building activities and getting to know individual participants. A new addition was the recap of our work from the first activity, which helped new participants dive into the topic and get on the same wavelength.

This time, we left behind adrenaline activities and used our location in the center of Wrocław for team building. We played a city game focused on true/false statements about various places in the city, which participants had to verify without using the internet.

The team-building activities supported effective communication, cooperation, and helped us highlight the strengths of each participant. The knowledge about media literacy we gained helps us navigate complex situations in the digital era. Friendships and shared experiences strengthened relationships between organizations and directly among participants.

The next day, we focused on improving skills needed to distinguish reliable information from misleading content. Through elaborate workshops, interactive discussions, and engaging activities, we enhanced our critical thinking and media literacy skills. To better understand the impact of disinformation, we tried creating various types of false articles, including their graphic design.

The experiences we gained the previous day were put into context by Khatia Legidze, an expert on the disinformation scene in Georgia, Ukraine, and Poland. Through a one-hour informal activity, we experienced firsthand how incomplete information focused on emotions can influence individual and group thinking and lead to false conclusions.

On the last project day, we focused on dissemination activities and project evaluation, both individual and group. The main outputs of the activity are memes that spread awareness about fake news in a humorous way, which are published on the social media of Mladoevropani organization and partners.

We would like to thank the Semper Avanti organization for providing the venue and their help with organizing this mobility.

Matěj Valenta