Anna Krasavina, Associate Professor of the Department of Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations at the Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities of South Ural State University, made a presentation on the “Validation and Verification” within the frameworks of the Central Asian Data Journalism Webinars Program, which was held under the auspices of UNESCO.
Representatives of the leading universities from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Russia took part in the “Countering Disinformation: Validation and Verification” webinar. In her report, Anna Krasavina spoke about the SUSU experience in organizing Eurofactcheck international journalism megaproject of the European Journalism Training Association at the university.
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The Eurofactcheck project has launched an impartial network of journalism schools (J-schools) to improve the quality of political debate in the European media, opened discussions on EU policy, stimulated active participation of citizens in this process, and motivated student journalists through social networks to check the statements of EU politicians on the pan-European platform. The project has also created a collaborative environment for the journalism schools of the European Journalism Training Association to develop innovative fact-checking training modules based on European research and the latest fact-checking techniques.
“For three years, Master’s degree students of the Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities studying in the Transmedia Journalism programme have been publishing fact-checking materials on the pan-European platform EUfactcheck.eu in English,” said project manager Anna Krasavina. “More than 35 works by Master’s degree students have already been published, and now we are working in an international collaboration with Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznan, Poland), and we are also conducting joint scientific research.”
At the Department of Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations of the SUSU Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities, an innovative educational module “Fact Checking and Verification” has been developed, and the Journalism, “Fake News” and Disinformation textbook has been translated into Russian. The textbook has been published at the university with the logos of UNESCO and SUSU.
At the UNESCO webinar, participants also discussed topics such as “Media and Information Literacy in Higher Education” and “Methods and Tools of Data Journalism: Fact Checking with Spreadsheets”.