On 27, 29 and 30 March at the Cultural Studies Department of Sofia University, three thematic focus groups were held within the Media Literacy for Democracy project, funded by the European Commission. The project consortium unites six partners from five EU countries, and the Italian Federation for Human Rights – FIDU is the coordinator. The project aims to counter disinformation and the spread of fake news and to empower citizens to make informed decisions and protect their democratic values.
The project is in its second phase, which aims to analyze the context of media literacy and stimulate debate among citizens through three focus groups in the partner countries.
The main goal of the conducted focus groups was for the youth to receive more expert information on the importance of media literacy, how to recognize misinformation in digital and traditional media, and to what extent misinformation affects marginalized groups.
Discussion topics in the first focus group were media literacy and skills to deal with fake news and disinformation. Prof. Dr Milena Dobreva, Head of the research group on disinformation detection and research at the GATE Institute, and Zornitsa Hristova, editor-in-chief of the Vizhte newspaper for news in children’s language, joined the discussion.
The topic of the second focus group was the influence of disinformation on democracy at the European level, during which participants played a simulation with associations related to key terms such as democracy and disinformation, European society and civic participation, European institutions and sources of information, and combating disinformation at the European level.
In the third focus group, participants discussed the differences and quality of traditional and digital journalism. Ruslana Margova, a researcher at the GATE Institute with editorial experience in Bulgarian daily newspapers, joined the focus group. The discussion revolved around artificial intelligence, benefits and harms, and fact-checking methods in digital journalism.