The online conference Information Matters: Enhancing Adults Digital and Media Literacy was held on September 26, 2024 with a focus on its acquisition by adult users over 55 years old.
The event topic was discussed in a broad perspective by participants from all over Europe to engage and interact: experts in the field of media and digital literacy, librarians, adult educators, policymakers, representatives of non-governmental organizations whose practice has intersections.
This conference was one of the closing events for the Information Matters project, implemented in the period February 2023 – October 2024 with the financial support of the European Union under the Erasmus + program. Spaska Tarandova and Vanya Grozdanova from the coordinator of the project – Global Libraries – Bulgaria Foundation summarized the results and the challenges related to the IM project implementation. In 2024, the training session have been implemented in 2 stages: a programme targeting trainers, 170 in total in Bulgaria, Austria and Romania and in the second stage – a pilot training in the three countries for two months for 400 people aged 55+.
There were participants among the representatives of the partner organizations working on the project who took part in the closing Q&A.
Three speakers presented their findings and shared experience on the topic.
Paolo Celot, Founder and Director of EAVI discussed the current media literacy trends in Europe, focusing on the importance of media literacy training for senior citizens.
Over the last twenty-five years, Paolo has accumulated considerable international experience in media, working for long periods in London, Milan, and Brussels and organised workshops and training about the role of media in people’s lives. He said that they had tried to put the media literacy in the agenda of the policymakers and their efforts had much more recognition.
Justine Toms, a university professor at New Bulgarian University, Sofia University and SoftUni Digital conducted an interactive workshop on fighting fake news, misinformation and AI content. Justine is an expert in online media and marketing, founder of digital agency ABC Design & Communication since 1998. The practical workshop was interactive and showed the main issues with the low media literacy levels.
Nikola Tulechki, a linguist and knowledge engineer at Ontotext talked over AI’s relation to propaganda and to democracy. He is one of the founders of the Data for Good – Bulgaria and the Association for Fair Elections. He painted a picture about the current situation and how actually the algorithmically suggested content conspiring with generative AI to create and basically to fill the space with a lot of nonsensical content and how various factors can use this to undermine the trusted society.
On the links below there are recordings of the presentations on media literacy and AI’s relation to propaganda streamed during the online conference.
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Video Recording of Paolo Celot’s Talk: watch here
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Video Recording of Nikola Tulechki’s Talk: watch here