Read Twice in Portu: preparing young people to fight misinformation

On March 27 and 28 2023, the second part of workshops was held at the University of Lusófona in Porto as part of the Read Twice project, whose main goal is to increase media literacy and fight against fake news. Among the 30 young media professionals from Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, our students from the Department of Communication studies Ana Kahlić, Magdalena Magdić, Ema Smrtić and Manda Zrno, together with prof. Ph.D. Danijel Labaš.

While previously in Berlin young people were focused on developing skills, learning techniques and adapting to new tools for fact-checking and bias recognition, in Porto the participants worked on developing their presentation skills, organizing knowledge, as well as mapping the audience and their specific problems in digital and convergent cultural environment.

On the first day, the participants were introduced to the student media publication #Infomedia, where young people from the University of Lusophone can improve their skills and develop their own portfolio. In addition, a lecture on developing a multimedia narrative experience was held by documentary filmmaker, university professor and journalist Vanessa Rodrigues.

On the second day, young media workers visited Radio Nova and the editorial office of the newspaper Publico, where they discussed various journalistic practices with experienced professionals. Finally, in a final practical task, participants presented their concrete ideas and media literacy programs for their countries, including target groups, duration, content and approach.

The knowledge that the students acquired will now be passed on to young people in Croatia at workshops that will be organized on the topic of fake news and how to recognize it.