Explore our media education activities in the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and Poland. Our primary target groups are teachers and journalists, but we also reach out to young people, parents and the general public.
Click on the lines below and find out more about our activities. If you can’t click on the lines, it may be because you have not allowed all cookies on this website. You can change your cookie consent at the bottom of the page.
The AFP team, led by Jocelyne Zablit, prepared a set of video tutorials explaining the basic fact-checking techniques. You can find out, for example, how to use advanced search on the web or Twitter, how to search for images or videos, or how geolocation works. The videos are available in English (below), Czech, Slovak and Polish. AFP also created two online guides and two quizzes, which test the ability to evaluate information.
Advanced web search
Advanced Twitter Search
Using Metadata
Geolocation
Reverse Image Search
Reverse Video Search
The AFP team created two quizzes testing the skills gained by watching the video tutorials (see above). They consist of several news items that require further verification. After you apply some of the fact-checking techniques introduced in the tutorials, you will get feedback and concrete examples of best practice solutions.
The Czech team from Palacký University in Olomouc, led by Kamil Kopecký, is organising six lectures for current or future teachers and journalists from October 2022 to March 2023. The lectures aim to increase the participants’ media literacy and provide inspiration on how to strengthen the media literacy of others.
The interactive lectures focus on topics related to the critical perception of information online. Other issues addressed include:
- information disorders and cognitive distortions,
- the basics of fact-checking and debunking,
- the limits of freedom of expression,
- the issue of the so-called apolitical nature of schools.
The lecturers use concrete examples to explain the topics and provide guidance for media education activities at school. Participants are actively involved through means such as voting via Slido.
If you would like to attend the lecture in person or online, you can find more information about the content of the lectures, their dates and registration here.
Download the handbook for teachers of media education
In addition to the lectures, the Czech team also created a handbook for teachers with tips on media educational activities that they can use with their pupils or students in teaching. The manual was prepared by the author team of Kamil Kopecký, Dominik Voráč and René Szotkowski. It is aimed at strengthening media literacy and offers various options for working with the topic of truth and lies in the online environment. The handbook will be distributed in printed form to the participants of the aforementioned lectures, but it is freely downloadable for anyone in PDF format (in Czech). Just click here or on the front page preview below.
To better understand the Czech team’s approach to media literacy education, you can read a brochure in English introduced at the CEDMO annual conference in September 2022. You can download it here.
The Slovak team from the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, led by Norbert Vrabec and Viera Kačinová, is primarily working on media education activities for Slovak audiences.
See examples of good practice from competing teachers
The competition titled “Online Misinformation – a Challenge for School Education – Examples of Good Practice in Teaching Media Education in Primary and Secondary Schools” was launched in May 2022 and lasted until the end of February 2023. The goal was to find examples of good practice and use them to create a methodological manual. It will be available for download here once it’s finished.
The competition already has its winners! The evaluation committee consisted of 5 evaluators from the Department of Media Education at the Faculty of Mass Media Communication of the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava and each evaluated 27 examples in 7 categories. You can find information about the winners and their rewards on the website of the IMEC – International Media Literacy Center at the Faculty of Mass Media Communication of the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava.
Join media education course for teachers
The teacher course will focus on online disinformation and it is planned for spring 2023. Would you like to learn more or register? Do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].
Offer your students a course about fake news and critical thinking
From May to September 2023, the Slovak team will run two online education courses for selected groups of primary and secondary school students on the topic of fake news and critical thinking. Do you want to learn more or offer this course to your students? Do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].
See an overview of media education projects with focus on disinformation in Slovakia
The Slovak team is collecting information about educational projects focusing on online disinformation. The goal is to prepare an overview of all relevant projects for teachers The projects will also be analyzed in an upcoming report.
The team has already produced a research report on research focused on media education projects related to disinformation in the Slovak environment. The paper entitled “Media literacy models in the field of disinformation to support citizenship in the application of Slovak educational projects and online platforms” was presented at an International Congress Alfamed in Peru and is available here (page 1109, in Spanish).
The Czech and Slovak teams will collaborate on producing a comparative study analyzing educational projects focusing on disinformation. The results will be published here.
Strengthen your media literacy by playing a game
A team from the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies led by Jakub Šimko developed an educational digital game called “Factology Checker”. Players have the opportunity to learn to analyze and evaluate certain types of media messages.
The purpose of the game is to educate the players and generate data valuable for further research and development of AI-based tools to support the work of fact-checkers. The educational purpose of the game is to familiarize players with the role of artificial intelligence in tackling disinformation.
The KInIT team seeks to raise awareness about the state of the art AI techniques capable of detecting misinformation and to educate on their strengths as well as weaknesses. The players will also have the opportunity to learn about a variety of false information narratives, with which they will work in-game.
The game is that players should modify a given tweet without changing its real meaning, yet causing an existing automatic misinformation detection model to fail in recognizing that the tweet contains misinformation.
Do you want to try playing it? Click here or below to preview the website where the game in English is available.
The Polish team from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, led by Karina Stasiuk-Krajewska, Katarzyna Bąkowicz and Tomasz Wołodźko, is preparing several media education events as well as practical tools.
Are you a teacher who wants to learn more about disinformation? Join our webinars
During the first webinar, the Polish team for example explored what causes vulnerability to disinformation and presented examples of disinformation narratives and fake news. The participants were introduced to initiatives and tools that can help them identify disinformation (fact-checking portals, simple technological tools, etc.). The lecturers discussed specific ideas on how to talk to young people about disinformation. The first webinar took place on November 28 2022 and you can read more information about it here. You can also watch the recording of the first webinar below (in Polish).
The second webinar took place on March 30, 2023, and you can read more information about it here. We will inform you about the date of the next seminar on the CEDMO website, it is planned for autumn 2023. For more detailed information about the webinars, contact the Polish team via e-mail [email protected].
All webinars will be live-streamed on the Polish version of the CEDMO website and through the SWPS University’s YouTube channel. We will share instructions on how to join in good time before the webinar, and registered participants will be notified separately. All three webinars will be recorded as well so you can watch them afterwards, even if you cannot attend.
Do you work in the media? We have a special event planned for journalists and fact-checkers
The event will take place at the beginning of 2024. The registration has yet to be opened (but once it is, we will let you know here). The first part of the event will consist of lectures and round tables on disinformation, the second part will be dedicated to practical workshops for journalists. We aim to bring together journalists across various media organizations and fact-checkers to find new ways of collaborating in the fight against disinformation. The lectures and roundtable discussions will be recorded and published here.
Contexts of (dis)information – discover a Polish podcast and video campaign about disinformation
This campaign includes ten podcasts and ten short films created for adult audiences. You can look forward to conversations with leading Polish figures about disinformation and its contexts. The guests include writers, political scientists, philosophers, historians or lawyers.
These are some of the questions discussed:
- Which tools can be used to fight disinformation in a systematic way?
- How can technology free us from disinformation?
- What can we do to prevent being manipulated?
- Are we even interested in the truth?
- Why is disinformation so popular in our cultural milieu?
- Does disinformation affect social gaps? Does it lead to exclusion?
Watch our videos or listen to our podcasts here!
All already created videos and podcasts are available (in Polish) on YouTube and Spotify. You can also view them further down on this page.
- Interview with prof. Adam Leszczyński, Polish historian, sociologist, journalist and publicist
Are you interested in what topics the conversation was about? Read about it here. You can watch it on YouTube as a video interview (in Polish) or listen to the podcast version on Spotify (in Polish).
- Interview with Maciek Okraszewski, founder of the Dział Zagraniczny portal
What were the main topics of the interview? Read about it here. You can watch it on YouTube as a video interview (in Polish) or listen to the podcast version on Spotify (in Polish).
- Interview with Sylwią Chutnik, a Polish writer, publicist, social activist
You can watch it on YouTube as a video interview (in Polish) or listen to the podcast version on Spotify (in Polish).
- Interview with prof. Kariną Stasiuk-Krajewską from SWPS University, a media and disinformation researcher
You can watch it on YouTube as a video interview (in Polish) or listen to the podcast version on Spotify (in Polish).
For the rest of the series, there is more to come. The Polish team publishes it on YouTube and Spotify every month.
Short films about disinformation with influencers – see the Polish campaign for the young
The Polish team will create three short films for young audiences in cooperation with influencers. The goal is to show fake news as an important problem and help young people gain competence in using online tools for verifying information. The films are set to come out in October 2023, December 2023 and February 2024, respectively. We will also share them here.
Are you a Polish parent? We have an online guide for you on how to work with the topic of disinformation in parental mediation
The handbook will help parents educate their children about the issue of disinformation. It will help parents to get teenagers interested and explain to them what makes disinformation a significant social problem. The authors will provide answers to relevant questions that may arise as well as information on verification tools. Once completed, you will be able to download it here.