Unmasking Disinfo Hacks project, the journey concludes

Participants:Betty Tsakarestou, Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, GreeceNikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & President of DCN GlobalVasilis Tsoulis, Co-founder and CEO of YET NGOJelina Makrantonaki, JournalistKaterina Beli, Political Communication StrategistModerator:Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA Outstanding quotes:Betty : “The core idea behind our project was that disinformation is a multifaceted and complicated issue that different factors and different stakeholders are affected by it and take action and initiatives.”“How do we bring together all the different ecosystem actors and get them all together as co-creators and partners; first to frame actual challenges and then to reframe, ideate and prototype possible solutions into different problems.”  “Disinformation is not just a literacy issue its a policy issue, a societal issue, a civic and  innovation issue!” “I think mixing people is one of the challenges beyond the topics. How we managed to engage people, professionals, citizens, students and experts to consider scenarios of what might be the challenge of misinformation in a specific field and how to  contribute in different ways.” Nikos:“I think that the one of  the most important issues that journalism is facing is the undermining of credibility and the loss of trust. This is what disinformation actually brings to the table; by discrediting journalists, discrediting media organizations and actually at the end opening up the space to disinformation and rumors and fake news ect.”Vasilis: “We have to be persistent and keep track of the technologies that are coming up everyday. Even the technologies that we used last year can be very outdated today and it’s really interesting to see that, in the hackathon, the teams were very keen to using the technology in order to battle fake news and people that had to do more with journalism were eager to work with tech related people into finding ways to work efficiently and for positive solutions.”Katerina: “We need to take into account  that young people right now are digital natives and this is something that really stuck to me during our latest episodes; the fact that we don’t need to teach young people how to use the tools, we need to teach them how to have fun with social media, while applying critical thinking around everything that they see online, because, since they were born into the digital world, they do not have a clear critical idea of how to navigate into that world.”“We need to be more critical and we need to be more upfront with solutions. We tend to create solutions for non-existent problems sometimes and right now disinformation is a very solid problem and we need to find all the different holistic approaches, in order to resolve it.”Jenina:“The more we talk about what AI can do, the more open we can be and have a stronger critical thinking point of view on what we are facing everyday on the internet.”Aurra:“So even the things that we were discussing a year ago and probably evolved 5-10 times. I think one aspect that keeps us on our toes is the fact that young people are the ones who are driving the change and who are coming up with solutions to hack disinformation and stay ahead of technology and without young people I think we’ll all be really stuck.”“The more advanced tech becomes, the more human-centric our approach must be.” DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.