Mediacentar Sarajevo, in cooperation with regional partners, is organising a series of online talks with regional and international experts focusing on the most current issues regarding media literacy. Five talks in total will be organised between 22 and 29 April, 2021. Participation is open to all interested parties.
For all events there will be simultaneous translation into B/C/S, Albanian and Macedonian.
Thursday, 22 April, 12-13.30 CET – opening event of the series will be a panel discussion about an increasingly relevant topic – Revenge porn: A digital threat exacerbated by the pandemic. Revenge pornography is a type of online violence to which an increasing number of young women in the region is exposed. The problem showed its scale when it was announced at the beginning of March that there were almost a dozen groups on the Telegram app in which tens of thousands of men, mostly from the Balkans, exchanged various pornographic content. Experience in Europe and the region indicates that revenge pornography is on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Monday, 26 April at 14.00 CET, representatives of The Guardian Foundation from London will talk about the development of sustainable media and information literacy programmes for young people. During the event titled The Guardian Foundation: How we develop media literacy programmes for youth, Kelly Walls and Margaret Holborn from the Guardian Foundation’s Education Centre will present their work on the contents of their MIL programmes, as well as examples of the Centre’s successful and continuous cooperation with schools and teachers. This webinar will be particularly useful for educators and civil society organisations working on the development of media and information literacy programmes.
Tuesday, 27 April, 14.00-15.30 CET is reserved for the topic of Regulation and self-regulation of social media, a talk focused on social media content moderation and platform regulation practices, presented by Jillian C. York, Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the author of “Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism”.
On Wednesday, 28 April, 14.00 CET, we turn our attention to science journalism. Event titled Science journalism: A remedy for lack of reliable, trustworthy information in the media? will focus on the importance of science journalism in the context of the current pandemic, how to contribute to a stronger presence of scientifically based information in the media and examples of good practices. Our speaker for this event is Milica Momcilovic, President of the World Federation of Science Journalists.
The last event in the series will be held on Thursday, 29 April, 14.00 CET. Tackling hate speech in the media: EU practices that work will focus on the work of Spletno oko, a hate speech hotline in Slovenia, and will give us an overview of EU practices of dealing with hate speech and the Code of Conduct for National Media developed by CSOs.
This series of online events is part of a regional project called “Media for Citizens – Citizens for Media” and it is aimed at audiences in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.
