EAVI was delighted to take part in an interview at the ArabelFM on the 26th of March. The aim was to explore EAVI’s role and participation in supporting the RWAN initiative. The initiative compliments EAVI’s activities surrounding hate speech, where in recent years, the narrative, which has reached the point of inciting against immigrants and refugees in the world, has increased thanks to the many new media and social networking platforms. We are now in a time of platform’s in which there is a wide spread of hate speech dissemination, which is reflected negatively on [...]

Through EAVI’s experiences in the field of hate speech against migrants and refugees, we have come to support the establishment of the RWAN initiative through her founder Lama Jaghjougha. Lama began working at EAVI almost a year ago, and through her role as project officer, is involved in European projects in the field of migrants and refugees. She is currently leading ‘Building Trust’ online campaign, which aims to clarify the effect of negative reporting that can occur by presenting a distorted and often negative image of migrants by the media and social media platforms, and [...]

The week of the 25th – 29th of March focuses on a key area for the individuals, communities and nationals alike – digital skills. On the 26th EAVI was invited to attend an event with our friends at All Digital and the Lifelong Learning Platform exploring how to enable citizens to take full advantage of the digital transformation. In framing the conversation, it was highlighted that 43% of the EU population has insufficient digital skills and are not able to take full advantage of the opportunities at hand in society (DESI, 2018). This of course [...]

“Disinformation changes as fast as technology, but disinformation is as old as information” The Disinfoweek conference (7th-8th of March in Brussels, organised by the Atlantic Council) was opened with this statement, underlying that the challenge we have been trying to tackle in the last 10 years or more, focusing on the spread of disinformation on social media platforms, it’s not at all a new phenomenon. Of course, it has been given recently more importance than in the past due to the high resonance it is having and its wide reach. The conference covered, in a [...]

Media literacy is an ambiguous thing. It can have many meanings to many different people of different backgrounds and many different purposes. This is both a strength and weakness. In one positive, we can use media literacy as an umbrella term for many things; digital literacy, information literacy, news literacy and so on, but on a negative side it makes it very hard to communicate to people and really address the difficulties in making a media literate society. There is a growing awareness of the need for media literacy, it is a building block in [...]

The Young European Federalists (JEF) hosted a training of trainers’ event to fight disinformation. The event was held in Novi Sad, Serbia, beginning on Saturday 23 February. EAVI’s education officer, Naomi Thompson, held workshops to introduce the young participants to media literacy and fake news.  The participants themselves were aged between 20 and 35, and were a mix of JEF members and individuals from civil society organisations from around Europe, representing 20 nationalities. Naomi’s workshop was well received, introducing the participants to media literacy concepts in different forms of media. There followed a discussion on [...]

There are very few ways of saying, “I know what your child looks like, their DoB, their diagnosis (and therefore suitability as a witness), and where they go to school,” without sounding overtly threatening. I should probably contextualise that. I have an unhealthy interest in Mummy Facebook pages and mom bloggers. They fascinate me. They also make me feel better about some of my parenting choices. But I’ve read the tales of tantrums and thrown food and wondered where it ends. The story about little Hugo discovering his penis at the age of two is [...]

Media literacy is predicated on a foundation of certain criteria, without which it cannot exist. One of which is access. Not just in terms of devices, but a capacity to use it. As such, basic, traditional literacy and language skills are as important as an internet connection when it comes to being able to access the media. Many of the people reading this will have learned English as a second language. Therefore, they know how absurd it is. That there is no good reason why lead and lead should not sound the same. “Two” and [...]