In November, undergraduates of the Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Public Relations of the Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities (IMSSH) at South Ural State University checked some facts about coronavirus and published an article in English "UNCHECKABLE: CORONAVIRUS CAN LEAD TO INFERTILITY" on the European portal EUfactcheck as part of an international journalistic project.
Under the guidance of Anna Krasavina, Associate Professor of the Department of Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations at ISSH, Candidate of Sciences (Philology), Master's degree students addressed the topical issue of human reproductive health in a pandemic, because a great deal of misinformation on this topic is circulating on social networks. In order to verify if COVID-19 virus can truly affect human reproduction, undergraduates asked authoritative experts for their comments and studied scientific articles and research conducted around the world. The material was of great interest among visitors to the portal and was highly praised by the European Association for Journalism Education and recommended as a “must-read”.
"In my opinion, this excellent result is no accident," said the Head of the Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Public Relations of IMSSH, Doctor of Sciences (Philology) Liudmila Shesterkina. “In 2018, the SUSU Department of Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations became a member of the international journalism project EUfactcheck, under which the pan-European platform EUfactcheck.eu was established to publish the results of fact-checking and implement an identical three-step fact-checking methodology for journalism schools at European universities, developed by the European Association for Journalism Education, of which SUSU is a member. This allowed the IMSSH Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Public Relations to reach a new, European level of project-based learning.”
Within the EUfactcheck international journalism project, cross-national collaboration continues with students from A. Mickiewicz University (Poznan, Poland). SUSU undergraduates have already met several times with Polish students, selected material for a joint factcheck, and started verifying data and preparing the next topical journalistic material for the EUfactcheck pan-European platform.