As numerous studies show, the offline (traditional, ‘legacy’) media are far less appealing to the young generation than online media, social media in particular. In some regions, such as MENA or SEE, up to 80% of young people use social media as their main source of information. At the same time this demographic seldom differentiates between the content provided by professional journalists and the content found on social media. If added to it the fact that the ratio between journalists and PR people is nowadays significantly different than 20 years ago – the ratio of journalists-PR persons being 1:1 (1:5 in some countries such as the Netherlands) - it has become extremely important to help the young generation understand the difference between facts (supposed to be provided by professional media) and ‘facts’ provided by PR persons or propagandists.
In the ‘post-fact’ era where politicians are refusing to deal with facts, when they play with raw emotions and mock experts and journalists omit to check the ‘facts’ – young people are in serious need of learning how to think critically about media’s role and media content.
The Media Diversity Institute’s Get the Trolls Out! (GTTO) project has been targeting younger users of the social media and helping them to recognise myths, lies, or hateful rhetoric and deal with them in constructive ways by using different mechanisms – from street theatre, radio debates, documentary films to cartoons or off and online debates. They initiated a simple guidance soon to be distributed by Twitter among primary and secondary schools.
This session will provide basic information about the GTTO and open a discussion on the best ways to differentiate between the facts and the ‘facts’, journalism, and propaganda.
Rapporteur for the session: Leon van den Boogerd, Team Leader Sustainable Media Development, Fress Press Unlimited.