 Great, let's kick off welcome everyone to the side session of the gddf conference strategies for addressing miss and disinformation in eastern and central Europe. We have a great group of colleagues today here to discuss and share our experiences in Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and beyond. As they relate to helping us all understand this topic of misinformation helping us build trust and literacy for civil society for authentic information and international development programs. We all are experiencing this social media, miss disinformation and how it's coming towards us. And we all understand how difficult it is to spot disinformation at a time that is probably the most critical in the world. We will have an hour to have this hopefully very lively discussion. I encourage you to please use the chat to put in your comments and questions. We will, we will be having a question answer type of discussion in this format and then have an opportunity to open up for questions and answers at the end. So we will kick off by by handing over to our colleagues Tomash Krishak Maria Marko Marko, Markovska, Anna, she and see, oh, she and it's got apologies Anna, and myself Elizabeth Villaruel, who are here to share our experiences, working with miss dis and malinformation in eastern and central Europe. Over to you Tomash. Thank you Elizabeth and thank you for asking me to participate and come to share our experience with what disinformation campaigns we had in Slovakia Alberta past few months. And then I would begin with explaining how difficult or different was the situation here in Slovakia in the past few months, because as well as the rest of the world we were just coming out of the last covid wave when in February 2022. The invasion of Russia to Ukraine started and it took us all by surprise. And even though the conflict itself was raging in Ukraine for the past eight years. I would say that most of the public was successfully living in a different parallel reality where many people didn't really have the grasp of the reality of the war and the conflict that was taking place there, even though we are the neighboring country of Ukraine. So what happened in February was that this invasion came by surprise, even for the actors who are pro Russian and are well settled in our infosphere. And we saw that for a few days they were really shocked and they were not able to actually create their own narratives that would help them to navigate the public in the in a way they wanted. So we had like a few day gap where we were capable of making sure that people in Slovakia were finally better in understanding the context of the conflict that was taking place there. And that actually helped Slovaks to find out why is it legitimate to be on the side of Ukraine, why is it legitimate to help refugees. And this was taking for a few days. And unfortunately later on, the forces that are known to spread this information and for Russian propaganda in the region started to use and test new narratives. This phase was taking less than a week. And after that they have evaluated what works best in our context and they start to reproduce that content and show it to a great amount of public. By the time I would say that the same structure of actors who are misusing the crisis of COVID-19 started to misuse the crisis of war. And at the time, we already saw, for instance, political actors like extremists or populists were for instance coming to the borders, and they were trying to create a scandal that it's not the Ukrainian mothers and children who are coming over to Slovakia, but it was different people, people from Middle East or Africa. So they were trying to actually make people in Slovakia think that, oh, this is another migration crisis. It's not something that is connected to the war, to the conflict that is taking place in Ukraine. After all, this was very effectively debunked by Slovak police, who they had like a Facebook channel that is disseminating debunks of various disinformation, even during the time of COVID, but also now during the time of war. They managed to show like how important it is to do a very strong and very understandable strategic communication. And they managed to maintain the morale of Slovaks who are now still willing to help Ukrainians because they saw or they overlooked the play that was played by these manipulative actors. This actually brings me to the important notice that what really worked here in Slovakia in the time, what still really works as a solution is the whole of society approach where we actually don't really debunk or inform the public separately, but the NGO sector, the state sector and private sector have created a sort of a loose union or of a network of actors who are contributing with each other and working with each other to actually be better at communicating with the public on databases. And for instance, when we have like NGOs that are on the borders helping the refugees, they make sure that they share the information they got from the field with televisions with politicians, even with the police, and therefore all that intel is then used in a way of strategic communication. So if that channel of communication and cooperation wouldn't be there, the actors who are successful in communication wouldn't then be able to do as much outputs as needed and to be very effective and actual and very fast in disseminating information and processing it. So it's crucial in times like these, when we are facing like very fluid crisis and the situation itself is changing at a high pace. And of course, the role of private sector and especially the role of companies like the one where I work is that we bring all of the actors I mentioned situational awareness. So even though the situation here is fluidly changing, and every day brings us new challenges, we are capable of monitoring enough of the infosphere. So it is possible for us to see the trends before they actually happen to have a major impact on society. And all of these things contributes to. Well, the whole society approach just mentioned. Thank you so much. We will dive in further to some of the strategies that Tomash mentioned and also the whole of community approach. Shortly, but first over to you Maria. Thank you. Hello, my name is Maria McCoss, I'm a training education manager in Texas. And I'm here, I'll be talking on behalf of Anna she's because I see she has some connection connectivity issues. Anna is the president of TechSoup. And TechSoup is a global organization supported through society actors through technology. And we are here to share our experiences in strengthening the society in the region for me to see initiatives. And like Thomas already shared a lot of inputs on how the situation is evolving in Slovakia. I'm myself I'm based in Poland. So we are really like close like TechSoup is a global or European scale of our activities but also says that Polish citizens are really close to challenges that are happening around us. And I would like adding to what Thomas said I wanted just to map the background right that's since the beginning of the of the war in Ukraine, the invasion of Russia in Ukraine we have like 4.1 million refugees have fled Ukraine right it's like the highest number of refugees that European have ever faced. Like, big amount of those people are in Poland. That really, of course that affected that as Polish society we need to react really like immediately like to all those people who crossed border, and yet to provide them support, and it was really like, I will talk about the disinformation complex in a second but just this this facts are important that with the real millions of Ukrainians. Our state was not ready to support them, just like this like day after day but it was really citizens who reacted and built like ad hoc informal system of help. So we really as a Polish society we I think that we experienced something super unique of such an amount of people mobilized to help others. And this is like one element but on the other hand also what we've observed since last month is that like the spread of Russian information has increased significantly that that this information war is just going simultaneously and it's not only across like between Ukrainian Ukrainian Russia but of course the whole Europe, and also just I feel that as Polish you are really in the middle of it. And so that's why I like it shows how this does like this information plus this need to react to help people shows how important to society is, and what is the light what is why the role is so important to be a player in this disinformation war, and also to really be trust that we can, we can be stay resilient and to help each other, not to refugees but also have to each other as Thomas said that this exchange of information is very important. And this is the context like where we are in right now. And we show that it's really kind of very sensitive moment that people are really vulnerable is something that refugees are vulnerable but also we societies are because we are vulnerable to disinformation we're vulnerable to polarization to tensions that this war is really around this by the corner and we are. That's why we have to think about what reactions or strategies that can support society something important but in in in the region in Central Europe to react in a smart way and just not to be not not to be influenced that the impact of the of the information can be lowered and I oppose here. I'm not sure if Anna is back. I don't see her. Yeah. Yes. We will come back to Anna shortly. So real quick, I will introduce myself as well Elizabeth be a real I'm with Deloitte. I'm going to be the moderator but also a participant bringing in some of the experiences of using mystus social sensing from the analytical perspective in Ukraine in particular where we where I most recently was able to use some of these capabilities so looking at all sides of the strategies that can be used. Our colleagues from TechSoup and Gary Latta are going to talk about the more grassroots, as well as a community based strategies that are necessary for all of us to be very aware of in order to combat this very topic of misinformation. So Anna I see that you're there. I will hand it over to you for a quick intro from your side. Hi can you hear me. Sorry I have a internet failure. Apologies. My name is Anna Shenitzka and I am with TechSoup, leaving our great team based in Warsaw and in the recent couple of years we've been implementing quite a lot of programs which were focused on civil society and countering this information so I'm going to basically focus on what is the role of civil society organization in countering this information and what we what organizations can do to tackle this problem. Thank you. Thank you very much. Really excited to have had the opportunity to pull this together with TechSoup. Like Peter in the comments just said this is a very timely topic. Most definitely for Eastern Europe and Central Europe as we are seeing things play out in Ukraine, but also for many countries around the world that are also dealing with misinformation. So with that I'll kick off our first question to the group for discussion. How has missed this information on the war in Ukraine impacted your community in the central Eastern region. Maybe for Maria and Tomash who wants to go first. So let me mention a little bit that I would say that this information on the war in Ukraine brought the situation of being uncertain about what is happening and what will happen in upcoming months and this is the context in which like Polish society is in that it's really further ground for this information. We are like we already, I was tracking like what were the narratives pulled like eight weeks ago and right now and it's really going into the stabilization also destabilization of the support that is already provided to refugees. And so it's really because the situation is linked to our standard life, our lives about like really housing that is really important like hard to figure out where the apartment was right now that is about work education that we have Ukrainian children's schools that it's all like it's really some unstable situation and they were all in it and this information of course is a great tool to destabilize society even more. So, and what the another impact that I already see is that we have to like the manual nonprofit organization have, they have to react and transform their core activities to support refugees and that's something that we somehow anticipated will come closely is that they will be targeted by, by this information, and there will be a fact that their work will be somehow criticized that they're like they're taking the money that they call this is like a transfer and that the system is not heading to those that who that those who should get the help so it's all like really unstable. And that's what I see as a kind of something that we need to be prepared and all the strategies that should come within upcoming months that should be to this to strengthen releases to strengthen the resilience of civil society and not only nonprofits it's only these are also activists and journalists I would say, and I know Thomas maybe you want to follow on this. Thanks Maria, and I have like very similar findings and I think that the situation here and in Poland are quite alike, and yeah, I see and feel that our society has been going through. I would say a process of increasing anxiety, inner anxiety that is taking its toll and how people are seeing current affairs and how they are willing to be, let's say, willing to be in solidarity with others. But on the other hand, I also see that not only it's the fear and anger that is gripping its way on our society, but it's also the good things solidarity and willingness to help others that is blooming, especially in the parts where the influx of fresh was the highest, which shows that when people are seeing physically the people in need that affects them and that turns them to be actually kinder and nicer to the people who who surround them. And yes, we also are facing problems like there are no longer any places in the kindergarten, because there was this influx of children from Ukraine. And yeah, there are plenty of parents who are not happy about the situation but on the other hand there's a discussion that we have to overcome this and this is an objective situation that cannot be really affected that we would wish for new kindergartens to cause over a month because this crisis has started like, I would say, like a like a sudden thing that was unforeseen. And what also changed is that I finally see that society is very, very keen on information security, and the increase on the importance of information security happened during the COVID times. But now, when more and more people are understanding for instance what is hybrid threat, what is propaganda, how is it affecting the society. I think that our society is more and more prepared to be more resilient towards these techniques. Yet it brings this another characteristic for our society that once we are all aware of the dangers, it became more grim to have this existence where we no longer can have these pain glasses expecting that the world will not be threatening to us. So it's overly changes how Slovaks are actually seeing the reality. And I would say that this all prepares basis for people being more conservative, less liberal. And I think that this will also affect like how Slovak society will be moving forward even years after this crisis, like it defected people and their subconsciousness deeply. And just to add a few points to that from from my perspective, I think for us working in health reform in Ukraine, one of the things that was interesting that happened is that even pre war. We could see how disinformation could be very or miss disinformation but also like mal information be a bit like you can have ministers or other people being able to convey messages incorrectly that are then vulnerable points to shape and change into information. I think the power of information in the social media space and the speed at which it moves is something that we also had to take into consideration in a more systemic way to implement programs successfully on the ground. And to build that resiliency that Tomash was talking about, and to kind of have that situational awareness. So that you can make sure that the initiatives that you're working on are not only doing the most good and reaching the beneficiaries that you want but also are able to withstand shocks from the system so obviously we are now seeing that with the war in Ukraine as well. Yes, so with that I will move on a little deeper and maybe we can talk a little bit about what resources online communities networks are available to support knowledge sharing and capacity building to address disinformation. I'll open it up to the group to to start discussing what resources communities networks you've seen that work. I may I would add that in Slovakia we have this new group called good. And basically it's a few thousand people who are collectively working on disseminating kindness and messages of solidarity and and basically have factual communication and what they are trying to achieve is that Slovaks are becoming more and more aware how important it is to be part of the discussion in public space for instance like digital platforms. And those people they organize themselves to come into places where people are not so nice and where there's a lot of hate speech for instance, and they try to be there to moderate the discussion and show the others that the hateful comments are not normal. The normality is actually on the other side where people are good, where people are kind where people are understanding each other and they are polite, and they are trying to manifest kindness around them so that was one of the stories that emerge, even during the COVID but yes, even during the war, they were like a key factor that helped people in Slovakia understands the, I would say the emotional tone of the situation here. Yeah, I can add on the top of Thomas said our approach was very much focused on on assumption that in order to fight this information, we need agents of change and we need to influence people and change their behavior so civil society is working on the ground NGOs are very close to people, especially to vulnerable groups so our idea was basically to support organizations build their capacity so they can effectively counter disinformation and about disinformation we look through society and we're trying to understand which groups are the most vulnerable, and we were trying basically to address programs focus on those groups and giving you an example. In Central and Eastern Europe, those groups differ so from country to country the problems lay somewhere else. We can, I think we can easily say that in whole Central and Eastern Europe the problem is in lack of media literacy for children, but also for adults. So for example, elderly people are one of those groups which is really vulnerable to disinformation. And our approach late. We're trying basically to work with all the organizations that are working with people so we were not focusing on watchdogs or we're not focusing on on investigative journalists we were basically going to those working with children working with elderly working students, trying to spread the knowledge about disinformation across society and influence basically people's behavior and the approach light in the in the four pillars, one of them was how to understand like understand the tech disinformation counter it. And then we had the strong component around building capacity on how you basically educate people how to use media how to be critical thinker, how to basically consume information in the way that it's not affecting you when you are realizing what is the truth what is false. The third pillar was to basically create positive narratives, because when it comes to this information one way to go is to fight back, but the other way is to create information which are positive which are true, which get to the mainstream. And I think when you look at the landscape of Central and Eastern Europe media. You can see that most of media are influenced or owned by our conservative governments. So there's very little field for for instance civil society actors to get to the mainstream and the last assumption was security and safety. So what we observe in Central and Eastern Europe is there's more and more attacks. We see where targets are civil society organizations or activists, and the war in Ukraine, of course, made this phenomena stronger, not only when it comes to activists from Russia activists from Ukraine but also when it comes to basically activists working with refugees in Poland or another neighborhood country so that was, that was our thinking like, in order to fight and counter disinformation you also need to be safe and secured. And this knowledge is, you know, on the very low level amongst activists in amongst the society I think comparably lower to the knowledge about disinformation. Maybe I pause now Marisol handed over to you so maybe you can tell us a bit of practical examples of the programs. Yeah. So as Anna said, our approach was to strengthen digital resilience of different actors that influence society. And actually what I think answering also is about your question was strategist can work here I think that what we've managed to do is to create international community of expert practitioners and educators, because we work with them in a big program of media literacy and to design tailor to localize a different format of education media literacy education is also about digital safety and security. So they could go and transfer this knowledge skills content in their communities. So and this is like, so we were thinking that trainers and Thomas actually is one of our great trainers we're working with. And this group is a there, they can be those agents of change and they can influence the shift of awareness on local level. On the other hand, the same group of international expert they can work together collaborate exchange tracks on patterns, and it's not only on the media literacy level but of course like the core disinformation processes and patterns Thomas can tell more about it. Because those patterns are really replicated in different contexts. Of course there's this country specific focus and country specific situation but it's like, we really can learn from each other it's it's not the point to start everything from the scratch to create media literacy curriculum because it's really about the same core critical thinking skills. And that's what this international community of expert can be really powerful tool. Yeah, to react to be ready to react. I can pause here if you want to add something here I can continue later on other strategies that we can work on. Yeah, I just wanted to agree, Maria that disinformation as a phenomena is not only worldwide it's, as you said, something that is replicating. And we can assume, or say that it's basically misusing the same concepts that are incorporated in our brain that are wired in our brain, even though we live in Asia, Europe, or United States like in most of the cases the narratives and the techniques of manipulators are the same, and we can learn from each other like what works best. But even then we can find like small differences that need, I would say specific approach and specific way and maybe specific way of tools and techniques how to avoid and reason with people who are affected by the kind of disinformation or propaganda, but in general, how we can in maybe global scale save a lot of time and energy, and even resources is to actually cooperate, learn from each other and build bigger basis of knowledge of information security that has like very universal baseline and same. Yeah, really great points I think for for from my perspective as well one of the things to remember, at least for me to remember was that the change engines can also be within your projects. I think have been having somebody on your project that is susceptible to some of this misinformation when you're trying to implement. Like I was an anti corruption project in Ukraine, trying to further health system reforms. You know you need to make sure that your entire team is also has that critical thinking capability so for us, the situational awareness and being able to understand what those narratives were that we're moving in the social media space that are for us to better target our interventions were also really critical so it will help across the board I think it's something that we need to start thinking about as a community. In terms of skill set that we need to develop for all of our practitioners it doesn't matter what sector you're working in. Because I think you know I can give one little example from our project. You know there's always a lot of hearsay when you're implementing reform projects you know they're like oh well my grandmother that lives in this village is friend said that you know all the doctors are still collecting all this money. So these reforms are not working, but it's very different when you come to your team and you say like okay, this is some of the data that we have there is still a lot of, you know, lack of trust in terms of these reforms because these narratives are still prevailing So what can we do with our counterpart governments with our counterpart civil society counterparts health care facilities to help start changing that narrative, and also changing behavior around around the, these topics. So, I think it's also an important point to remember that these strategies can also apply to us and our teams. We have some great questions in the chat. We have a question entirely focused on strategies so we will get those shortly. But with that maybe I can move us on to the next question. Mostly for you Tomash. How would you describe the complexity of missed disinformation. We will zoom in a little bit into Slovakia right now. Well, firstly, I see there's a structural challenge because Slovakia, as many other countries has been, I would say taken by surprise by the emergence of new digital platforms. We never really had a nationwide programs that would help people understand what is the purpose of let's say social media, how to use them safely. And we were doing all these activities on the ad hoc and a small portion of population, even though almost three million Slovaks are using social media on everyday basis. And that created a symmetry where people are not really ready for the technology that has completely became entwined with their lives and is having a great impact on almost everything they are doing and how they are thinking and how they are informing themselves. And on the other hand we see that the corporations that have been establishing these services in our country where reluctant to actually show needed amount of responsibility when it comes to providing a better service of that kind. So for instance, we only have one fact checker in Slovakia, who is fact checking for three million people, which is a great amount of symmetry in securing the interface. And that created a lot of stress and need for our society to overcome the challenges of information security, and therefore we have like a lot of activists NGOs and even the government who in the past two years started to take pace to do something about this problem. And in Slovakia, of course, we have another aspect that is cultural, for instance, the most popular narratives, disinformation narratives that have a high prevalence and high popularity are for instance anti Western and anti American. It's not because of objective reasons but because we as a country have been under constant influence of propaganda since the 30s, when there was the first, the Second World War, and we became a, well, a country subjected to Nazi Germany, and the communism took over and they've been influencing local population with anti American propaganda for over 50 years. And then when that ended, even the new generation of Democrats were helping themselves to power by using those narratives and that is taking even right now. So the collective unconsciousness of Slovaks has been for three generations in affected by these false narratives, and that is greatly affecting how disinformation are modeled in our particular context. So we have structural challenges, cultural challenges, and then it's a lot of personal challenges as well because it's only a few people here in Slovakia who have been studying or getting ready for all these dangers that have emerged with new technologies. And of course, the other the another issue is that there's a lot of lack of resources that would help keep up like a long term operation of information security in our country, because we only come like from seeing the perspective that yes, we are capable of treating systems like short term problems that can emerge from the atmosphere, but there is a lack of long term strategic projects, and I just wish this will change in a in a near future so hope that answers the question. Yeah, definitely. Okay, let's dive in we see a lot of lively action in the chat about some strategies. So what are some tools strategies that can be used by stakeholders organizations to mitigate and also make decisions. And one of the questions that we received from Peter was about how, how can fake news be blocked from entering the digital platforms in the first place. And then also a really interesting question from me how about targeting disinformation or how the main targets for disinformation are retired people as were meant as was mentioned a little bit earlier, or people over 50 that may also have the least digital skills. But are, are, you know, hanging on to sort of Soviet and communist times and nostalgia. What are some strategies to reach this segment of the population so if I'll hand it back over to the group. Okay, starting off with, yeah, Maria. I can I can answer how to target the elderly people, which actually in Poland, and I've learned that it's like rather younger people are more susceptible to disinformation they're like I was surprised because it's not it shows that I've checked several researchers and that apparently this is really that with digital skills that being at this risk of being targeted by disinformation goes with, but to answer your question, I think that what the strategy that turned out to be successful in Poland is really like meatier literacy targeting the average of 15 or retired people but it has to be done in a safe way and with with by the institutions or educators who can really be trust among this group and create really a safe environment to learn into question and also to somehow say like admit that they are, they are lacking this knowledge and skills. And if you created such a and actually one of our trainer that we've been working with in Poland, exactly his organization was providing different workshops and webinars for other people just like being with them and exploring and asking questions and showing how to check information they're they're consuming and like the evaluation results showed that they really like they started to question and they're the critical thinking skills were improved. So I think that this really, this is a way to do but that's why librarian that's why teachers they're like those people who can be multipliers of media literacy should be targeted and targeted and actually acute with educational tools and resources ready to use like and tailored for for this specific age group. I would close here. And I know maybe Thomas you could try to answer the question about actually the technical solutions that block. Yeah. Yeah, I think that the most important thing is to understand that the actors who are responsible for disseminating this information, even in US or in Europe are often the same so they are more like recidivists who are continue to continue to do the deliberately what they were doing in the past, and to analyze that helps us to actually focus like who should be the, for instance, accounts or pages that I'm not saying they should be blocked but for instance their freedom of reach might be lowered so they wouldn't be so influential. And with the current state of affairs for instance how social media networks work in context of Slovakia. The most popular content, the most engaging content and most of the interactions come from the accounts that are actually the ones who are mostly responsible for creating this information. So, maybe applying this one rule would change everything. And here in Slovakia for instance, 80% of interactions created every day are by four clusters of actors who are known to create this information and who are like a very strong and successful propellant of Russian propaganda in our context. And those four clusters contain of approximately 50 profiles, and it's mostly politicians. So, it's very controversial like how to how to actually decrease their effect on society. On the other hand, most of them wouldn't even be in politics if it weren't for social media that helped them to actually gain power and become popular so all these. I think technically it's very easy, but before applying the technical solutions. It would be like a higher consensus of the society that would be then brave enough to say okay it's not enough even for politicians to lie and spread this information and then we can basically maybe do something about it but before that, if the consensus is not there. I'm afraid that is what would remain. Anna, would you like to add in anything. Thank you, Elizabeth. I think it's that one more element which is lack of independent free media in Central and Eastern Europe. So that is like that has a huge impact in Poland, according to some researchers to serve of population belief in everything they basically watching television and reading social media and this is the prime, basically source of of people's information. And, as I said before, public media are owned like in Hungary in Poland by government so we are facing here, not a foreign disinformation but we're facing here governmental propaganda which is just depending and and powering up divisions in society I think that elder is a very good example, I don't think that it is as much as nostalgia for the past but it's rather building a different world, which is based on very conservative values and and which is racist, which is anti Semitic which is not basically supporting freedom of people choice when it comes to who they want to live with or who they want to love so I think that it's a lot of rhetoric against European Union against America. So I feel that this is also something that it's really worth to recognize that we're not facing here only Russian government creating a huge propaganda machine but it's being developed in our countries by by by our and people are basically helpless and civil society organization can do as much as they can do but we feel that the polarization is also growing on on both angles so it's like everybody people just really start hating each other. And it's really hard to work in such communities so our senses that there should be more initiatives which are basically building trust in community so our approach is really go to local communities talk to local governments because this is where you can actually have an influence. When you really go and under the loop you see people you connect them you make them talk you make them discuss you, you start creating a dialogue instead of basically pushing things into, you know, extreme right so I feel that these are the the important things in Centro in Eastern Europe also investigative journalists they are often working as NGOs. And one of the reason is, you know, the difficulty basically in in operating as a as a traditional media but there is also just maybe go back to what Thomas already said and also you Elizabeth about the connection between sectors that it's really hard to achieve a critical mass if you don't have different stakeholders at the table. Because we need because the times are difficult, the word is changing very rapidly it's very dynamic. Whatever like the best example is, we've been implementing in Central Eastern Europe programming 14 countries focus on countering disinformation funded by the State Department. Because offline pro about educating people on on how disinformation works and what to do to fight it. And we had only then the COVID happened, and we had to convert all the offline work into online and we had only three months to do so. And we can lift it because we are, you know, still small but later, if you look at the whole sector relatively large organization, but most of organizations can handle it. So I think that this is also something that it really worth to to consider that this is extremely dynamic and changing environment and without very strong and close collaboration it will be really hard to tackle problems and solutions and it has to be in between private sector media governments and civil society organization but also education institutions. Otherwise, we won't be able really to to influence people and change behaviors. Thanks. So just adding to this discussion, I think, you know, going back to the project implementation perspective and zooming up a little bit, I think for for me as the Chief of Party of this project I think being able to use this AI social sensing tool was really critical I think in order to fully understand what we were implementing kind of like what Anna was saying. And and being able to build this trust in what we were doing. I think just as an example, in Ukraine, one of the big reforms is to roll out a program of medical guarantees for universal health coverage for for all. I think we as implementing partners kind of usually go into implementation with a set of assumptions. Our assumption was that you know, people generally understood what this was about. And so in our implementation we had partner, one of our stakeholder partners was the National Health Service. So together with them, we worked on a awareness campaign about the program of medical guarantees, you know, posters, types of like awareness across different types of communities and sector sector groups to to spread the word about what the program of medical guarantees was. When we use the AI social sensing tool what we came to realize was that a lot, there was still a lot of misunderstanding about the program of medical guarantees and what was offered and not offered as part of the package, which I think as an anti corruption project for us is quite interesting because that then lends itself to opportunities for informal payments which we were trying to help the government cut down. But one of the nuggets of information that our team learned from being able to use this tool and understand the miss disinformation that was percolating around Ukraine was that the largest group that we found that didn't understand the program of medical guarantees was was the medical community, which we had an assumption was actually like they should know since they're the ones that are in these hospitals with these posters working with us day to day. And so we then were able to quickly shift our approach by getting this information to not create this void for miss dis either so there's a lot of preventative work I think that can be done. So that messages are not co opted, because that would have been a very easy vacuum to come in and say like oh well you know they promised a universal health coverage but you still have to pay for all these things. So we then created a very different set of approaches, just for the medical community just for nurses just for doctors to understand how the PMG was going to evolve over time. And then that also like using tools like this it also helped us be able to monitor a little bit better our impact on the project. So just adding another layer of how this can help because I think you know being able to have that awareness up front can really help us across sectors as well, and partner with civil society in a in a more productive way I think. So as we're rounding out the time and before we we move into questions there's a few questions coming into the chat here. I'll, I'll open this up. So first I think a call to action so what can people funders collaborators due to support some of these strategies. This goes out to the group, and then also looking at our chat. So what is the tool. I think there's some questions about the tool that we're using for social media sentiment understanding. And, you know, any other kind of last minute tidbits from from our discussion panelists here as we're rounding out our time we have about five minutes. So that call to action for the team discussion groups and please keep your questions coming we'll see how many we can answer in the time that we have left over to you guys. I can go first. I can just say that from the experience we we have learned that really creating sustainable systems is super important, and supporting mutual visibility of different initiatives that are that have the same goals like to really strengthen the interests of civil societies, and to show what actual what strategies what what tools what content really works well and replicated just not to start from described but really support the mutual exchange and learning. I would say that this is the call to action that's like, it's helped us to do this better and help us to keep going. Yeah, I said very similarly, and I think that it's time to adopt the philosophy that we are all kind of physical citizens of our world and our communities, but also active digital citizens in that digital realm where we have like our own way or potential of power to actually influence that little bit of society that we live in. And I think it's better when people would actually accept that they would have like more fulfilled lives and would live in more safer and better working societies, when they would be more active. Also on the platforms in a good way in a positive and meaningful way, and be less passive because being passive on social media it's like ending up in the trap where you would become maybe even more hopeless and desperate. So, it's always better to be active, it's always better to do something. And of course connect with with other people and look for the ways how to make all these activities something that is going to be a long term activity. Like, it's not going to be something that I will be doing only over a season but it can become like a my hobby or, or something that I do as a volunteer on a long term basis and maybe even find a way to build a career around such activity. And I think that was like, that was basically the story of my involvement in this that I started as a person who was just volunteering and eventually became, well, a profession and what I'm doing so on over to you. I think I would still support the idea of building bridges, building connections and building trust in communities. So, but what what Thomas was actually also saying, I believe that sustainability, which Marisa was referring to super important. But it's very hard at this point, it's very hard to achieve that because the situation is so dynamic so the war is a huge game changer. And I think that this information has to be always approach, having the political background in the in the back of a hat. I do have unfortunately pessimistic view that the war in Ukraine will not help democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, meaning that it will rather help to centralize power and build specific narratives around that. And it will be an instrument in the in the hands of people who are governing Poland, Hungary and other places but I feel that this ability really to address it on multiple levels, and looking into it from different perspective is is is super important having in in mind that the society will even is polarizing that Internet is just depending this polarization. And I think that the local level in terms of when you look at what can be done. And then Ukraine actually for where it was a bit the same like it was, you could achieve way more looking locally, working locally then then working on the on the national level so I'm always relaxing to think strategy because you can have to your strategy and then something like work of it happens and the strategy is gone. So I think that flexibility thinking in the in the way of, you know, having even a strategy if things are changing rapidly is something definitely worth to consider and and building those connections across sectors and supporting civil society in building those connections with local activists and local organizations. Thank you. Well, I think just to close it off, the call to action I think from my side is really pushing our donors and other contributors to start looking at myths and disinformation as a very necessary cross cutting aspect of the work that we do across all sectors. Like we've all highlighted it isn't just a, you know, one function of work that we have to do I think it's a way that we have to start rethinking how we do international development and integrating some of this larger international awareness and impacts and ramifications into our programming, tying back to what administrator power said yesterday in the kickoff it you know a more ecosystem approach to using digital tools. And as Tomash said earlier, we are digital citizens now in a very digital world. So it's very important I think for us to start developing these skills within our organizations as well as with our beneficiaries and really rethinking how we're approaching some of the problems we're trying to help solve. So I think with that a great conversation from all of us I think really timely opportunity for us to bring up this topic. You know I agree with Anna having spent many years in the region as well and fortunately, and maybe fortunately while the war in Ukraine has brought to this topic of myths and disinformation to the forefront for us. It isn't going to just end I think it will continue to evolve and get more sophisticated. And I think the onus is on us to make sure that we can keep up and get ahead of it by being able to build these critical thinking skills. I think this is a global problem, obviously not just affecting Central and Eastern Europe. We see it in the news everywhere. And, you know, social media is not going anywhere. So, something that we will need to develop from the school level like like Maria was talking about early on, and in terms of media literacy across all types of groups, but in particular with vulnerable groups and I think you know a misconception for us as always that it's digitally linked, but it isn't always so. Thank you everyone and thank you for the chat and for the questions that came for tech soup for helping us pull this together as well and to obviously our participants today. I hope everybody has a great rest of the day enjoying the rest of GTDF and please do not hesitate to get in touch with any of us on hearing more about the work that that we're all doing in this very important space. So, thank you all. Have a good day. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye bye.