 senior civil society. I'm the senior civil society and media development technical advisor. Over to you, Adam. Thank you very much, Adam Kaplan. In this capacity here today, I'm an independent consultant. I've been associated with media development projects, many of them funded by USAID over the course of the last 20 years or years. But in this capacity here, I am a private individual speaking my own views. I welcome you all. Thank you very much for for coming today. Slobodan. Hi, everyone. My name is Slobodan Bogochan, and I'm coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina. I guess that I'm here because of our most visible youth initiative that we have not just in Bosnia, but in the whole Western Balkan. The name of the initiative is Cat Bosnia and Herzegovina, basically citizens against terrorism. Let's say that our main goal is fighting against nationalism, but I can say that in Balkan in the recent years, together with the nationalists, we have this narrative that is really often covered with the false news and so on. I hope that we will have time to discuss about that. Excellent. Thank you, Marius. Yes, hello. My name is Marius Dragomira and I'm the director of an institution called the Center for Media, Data and Society, based in Budapest and Vienna. We are a research center covering media, doing media studies and we do mostly comparative work in a number of countries internationally. And thank you very much for having me here. Thank you and welcome again. Jacqueline. Yes, thank you. Good morning to all of you. Good afternoon to my fellow people. I'm Jacqueline I'm the CEO of R&W Media. We are a digital media NGO, building communities for young people who would like to contribute to social change in their environment and social change meaning changes in attitudes, in behavior in social norms and policies. We're active in countries like Syria, Yemen, Libya, and the China, where the rights of young people to be hurt are under pressure. I have a background in corporate media and currently working in the NGO world. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Vukasin. Thank you. Vukasin Petruic, I'm part of the funds that support the media and civil society organizations across Europe to counter disinformation propaganda and malign influence. We are working in around sentry countries at the moment. As I said, this media and civil society on a variety of strategies and trying to implement different approaches in trying to promote human rights and democracy and counter disinformation and propaganda. Currently, this institute and over the last 20 years had a chance to work on several democracy and human rights projects across the world. Great, Vukasin. Thank you very much. So let me provide a few notes on logistics and how we're going to run the conversation. Then I'll do a very brief set up and then turn it over to Adam and then Susan and then we'll begin the conversation with our panelists. We are recording as I think you see on your screen the conversation so that the proceedings of this conversation can be shared with the form organizers. So just be mindful of that. We will encourage you to put your questions during the course of the conversation into the chat box. To the extent that we have time, we're very tight on time. We will entertain questions towards the end of the conversation. However, I do want to note that we have provided a facility for another 15 minutes following the hour for any of you who would like to stay on and discuss the questions or share comments with us. We will keep the main body of the conversation as billed to our hour, but we will have the extra 15 minutes. So just know that also we haven't muted the group entirely. So if you are listening in, of course, press mute and you can unmute yourselves when you want to talk. If in fact there's background noise, then it won't interfere with the conversation. So with that in terms of how we're going to begin, let me just provide a brief introduction and then we will kick it off and start the proceedings. This is a conversation we're having again when facts don't matter then what that Adam and Susan and I have been having for quite some time. Increasingly concerned that we have evolved into a world that we might even call a post fact world that necessitates rethinking our assumptions and the remedies regarding countering mis, dis and malinformation. Ultimately, our concern is mediation of difference in society in democracies and therefore we wanted to have this conversation the context of the Summit for Democracy that will be taking place this week hosted by the US government with some hundred countries involved to provide an additional perspective on how we see disinformation, malinformation, disinformation essentially impeding the ability of people in society to peacefully settle and mediate their differences. To be clear, we are very supportive of fact based journalism, fact based media that we in no way wish to suggest when we say when facts don't matter or talking about a post fact world that we don't think facts are relevant. We do think they're relevant, very relevant. It's just that we don't think in many contexts today based on our own professional experiences that they suffice. That we see a world in which people operate now increasingly on social media particular and information silos where they only wish to listen and interact with people who think as they do and believe as they do and do not cross over and are therefore very prone to disregarding facts from other sides and increasingly susceptible to falsehoods and half truths. We wish to take a look at this world that we're now in, the operating assumptions that have guided us up to this point and whether we need to fundamentally rethink a few things. That's our operating thesis. That's what we're going into this conversation with. Again, the setup that we have shared at the website, the forum website explains that as well. What I'd like to do to start is to have Adam, who is the original proponent of this thesis, elaborate it for a few minutes, turn to Susan who as many of you know has studied a wide range of counter disinformation practices and can give voice to the many different ways in which we have attempted to address this disinformation problem and have fallen short and continue to fall short. Then we want to enter into the conversation with our panelists around three basic questions. First of all, is the thesis that we're proposing right? You can push back on the thesis. You can affirm the thesis. You can challenge it, whatever your perspectives happen to be. If we find some merit however in the thesis, then we want to turn to the second question which is what else can and must content creators and media do as a result of the situation that we're now in? And then finally as we think about moving into the new year, a year of action that the Summit for Democracy is also aiming to to foster, where we might be exploring actions and new areas of practice. Is there some merit in considering a new area of practice that would look at nontraditional ways of addressing disinformation? So that's the background. That's the setup and let me turn it over to Adam to elaborate the thesis for a few minutes to Susan and then we will start with the first question and our panelists again. Thank you all for joining us and Adam please take it away. Thank you very much Bruce. Thank you everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening wherever you may be. Thank you for contributing and joining us here. This is an idea that has been tickling in the back of my head now for a couple of years. As I did as I do my work in media development around the world, I'm increasingly struck by this this the disconnect between the way that the development community, both democracy and media, but also human rights and even economic growth and health seem to me to be somewhat disconnected from the reality of the information environment in which they're working. There seems to be this assumption that if sufficiently correct facts can be put out and can be disseminated then perceptions can be swayed and the conversation can be redirected. Information integrity can be reestablished and all of this can be fixed. The genie can be put back in the bottle. This conversation that's been tickling in my head and now I welcome you all to participate in is not one to eliminate or even exile those conversations. Those things are necessary. Those considerations are necessary but what struck me is that seems to me to be an absence of the other side of the equation. What happens if we are in a situation that we cannot fix, that the new condition is in fact beyond our ability to repair it? If that's the case then what? What is the role for media? What is the role for journalism? What is the role for the use of how should development or agencies consider their information environment as they proceed to move forward? This is the central question for me. I haven't found a robust conversation yet on it. There's some people that are tinkling with it, mostly their philosophers. They're less development and media practitioners but I'd really welcome this consideration. What if we are beyond our own ability to fix this? This isn't to negate whether or not these other things are valuable just can we please consider the other side of this equation and maybe in consideration of that we can reframe or at least add new information, new perspective to the conversation about what we might be able to try in places that are deeply conflicted where democracy is failing, where people's ability to negotiate difference is seemingly deeply, deeply affected. So with that, thank you. Over to you, Susan. Thank you, Adam. Hi everyone. I want to say that when Adam first presented this thesis it was really quite interesting and kind of provocative for me for a number of reasons and over the past two years I've been doing a lot of work on countering disinformation mostly through research as Bruce said in putting together something called the USAID Disinformation Primer with the DRG Center for Excellence and that assignment gave me the opportunity to kind of really survey the scene of who who's doing what and what are the solutions to this disinformation problem and I'll share in the chat that resource in case you haven't seen it and through that exercise which was a huge task as you all know because you're studying these issues every day there must be around a thousand articles or more coming out on various facets of the disinformation problem. The other problem as you know is disinformation is not new although technology especially social media and internet-based communications have changed the nature of the problem and in the disinformation primer we look at a number of different ways that you can approach it including working with technology companies national governments directly media organizations particularly independent media civil society led support education ministries or schools as well as interfacing with donors and getting either donors like USAID or philanthropic donors to invest in these solutions a number of solutions run the range from fact-checking to debunking discrediting bad information pre-bunking putting out messaging campaigns engaging in media and internet legal and policy-making related work so advocacy issues or policy-making reform and as a number of you know regulatory approaches to countering disinformation are often fraught with big questions about what does it mean in terms of freedom of expression or even access to information and other types of support could include supporting more journalism better quality media perhaps advertising outreach and working with advertisers directly to get them to kind of do a course correction and then as you all know media literacy digital literacy and information literacy are often key solutions and yet we come back to Adam's thesis which is well why is there so much miss and disinformation or malinformation to begin with and when we look at the state of our democracies or societies that we live in we often feel quite frustrated because we're in this very polarized world as we know because of the gathering for the summit for democracy and other things that we're all working on democracy is not in a good place and information and media in particular while they can be quite helpful they can often be quite corrosive and the question really is how do we contend with all of these issues and of all the different ways that you can counter disinformation which many scholars recognize as a kind of wicked problem meaning a problem that we can never really solve or get on top of I think Adam's thesis is quite attractive because it really puts forward the question of what else can we do and you know are there ways that we can do more community building or mediation and how do we use media or information or civil society led initiatives again to mediate the problems and to approach things differently and really to kind of heal our societies so over to you Bruce that's kind of a a kind of big picture and if you want more about all these different solutions and different approaches the the primer really kind of packages it all together great Susan thank you very much for that and I think by now to everyone who's joined the webinar and of course our panelists it's clear why we're here in this particular discussion what we intend to to explore so let's just get right into it in in the sense of examining this thesis before we jump to new approaches additional ways of addressing disinformation non-traditional approaches we want really to get the panelists perspective on the validity of the thesis itself that we are in a time when stressing facts alone will not suffice and with that I'd like to begin with a slow but on if you would start us off and if I could ask each of the panelists just to take again two to three minutes in addressing whether or not you subscribe to this thesis and then we will move into the area of what we would then want to do in terms of additional new remedies so slow but on please thank you Bruce first of all I also want to say thanks to Suzanne thank you for this PDF document that you gave us I just had a quick look and I'm really glad that let's say important people are starting to understand that memes are not just for the fun I don't know if you will have time today to speak about them and speak about social media but especially here on the Balkan for example if you are talking about lost elections in Montenegro we can say that we can correlate the big number of the people that went to elections I think it was 70 80 percent of them and a lot of youngsters actually we saw and what I'm trying to say is that for example memes as the things that we just see on the social media we think that they are created for the fun but mostly behind behind the such products there is I can say a lot of people who want to message some messages when we are talking about the pieces that you gave us Bruce and Adam first of all I would say that even five years ago if we had the same one the answer would be just like now the truth is that yeah we live in the past true society also as the youngest one here I do not want to be pessimistic but I think that the train went really really far away especially because of our bureaucracy that we have to follow and to track before we start to act especially if we are talking about right to ring the organizations not just in the Balkan but also the whole Europe we have situation with Hungary with Slovenia with some more European countries here that is obvious that they do not wait for any I don't know papers they do not wait for any approvals but they start their campaigns that I can say right now at least if you are talking about social media they are ruining they're ruining definitely society so my final answer is that that we have a huge issue with a lot of not just portals not just meme page but I would say right now even some governments that are more than happy to provide us with false news also if I can speak about Balkan I mean I'm not coming from Serbia but we are really close for example there we have the government that has all televisions under their control five national frequencies and you can just imagine how is that going every day the only one narrative is being placed to the people if you ask me what do we have to do as a counter Slovenian if I can just interrupt hang on to what we must need to do because that's really a going into the question thank you so much let me let me go to Marius we'll do the we'll do the first round on the first question great thanks yes well I I think the just to address the the assumption I think the the assumption is is valid what where I see a problem is I think with the there is not the facts are not enough I think we have what if you want listening to you if you want brief answer I think what is more important is to bolster the understanding of facts that's that's what we are in fact missing in many countries that's the real problem but when when I'm talking about the approach I just want to because what I what I think is the what I think is needed is addressing the systemic failings of the the media however you want to call it ecosystem or environment and yes misinformation is not new we know that but also we tend to we tend to forget when we support fact-checking initiatives and and by the way they are great and all these initiatives over the past years decades now have been have been very useful but looking at that and trying to counter misinformation by only by checking facts without thinking about the big structural problems of the media systems I think is is is really the the terribly wrong approach because just if we think about misinformation this is not what we have to really think about the historical trends here if we think about and this is another myth that we have to to to struggle with the fact that everything was great some 30 years ago we had independent media everywhere and suddenly everything is bad in all the countries misinformation is spread everywhere and this is not actually the truth we had in fact many years ago the dominance of the propaganda model in many countries in the world we had in the pre-internet era and we still have in many countries including some countries where you don't you wouldn't expect it like UK and Australia you have corruption in the media you have very low quality of the media and we just we just published a report on the UK media system 300 pages of analysis and it's not as as good as we would think it's you have a really we have many many bad players within the mainstream field as well of course we have many years ago problems with concentration of ownership which is a problem that that Slobodan mentioned it's coming from that and if you think about all these trends and many more and try to connect them with the trends today you you really understand what is happening you understand why there is such a poor first of all the the poor understanding by many media outlets of the audience is a big problem we build media media outlets without all the time really understanding the audiences we serve we if we think about all these things we can also explain the media capture problem which is a huge problem we see expanding in to many many more countries we also see a huge problem with the again the propaganda model spread even more than 30 years ago again i i want to refer to a study on state media we just published and 80 percent of all the state media in the world that we analyzed 151 countries are state controlled but what is really astonishing was that of the of this almost 500 or 50 media outlets 100 media outlets who enjoy that enjoy editorial independence of those only 18 media in the world 18 media are truly public service media independent public media in most of them in Europe so if you really think about that i'm just giving that example because we do not this media do not operate like in the 80s in a given in a given national context but they really operate globally today and that is a huge problem because it's not the the fact that you have bad media in China is not bad for China but it's bad for media in spain and anywhere else this media are available everywhere so i'm thinking about that and i can continue like that for for hours but i will stop here i i made i made these points because i think the the issue here is addressing and that's why i was talking about the wrong approach is addressing the systemic failings if we have if you have a working media system then you do not people you do not need people to to check facts because this misinformation websites will be outperform they will be kicked out of the market by the actual media system if you have a an independent media environment you do not need anything else because again these outlets will not find their audience so and saying that of course is not easy it sounds it sounds easy but this is probably the most difficult thing to rebuild the media systems and technologies so thank you thank thank you maris and i and i want to acknowledge something here and i'm also paying attention to comments in the chat and things that adam and susan and i have heard before in our conversations around this thesis just to be clear in our view we're not presupposing that there was a a mythical a perfect factual world at one point in time we don't subscribe to a garden of eden thesis here that things were perfect we are mindful in addition to media systems the pervasiveness and velocity of information because of social media and that essentially as we all know content generation and distribution has now gone viral and it's in everyone's hands so the notion of information spread and disinformation misinformation malinformation has a lot of course to do with the fact that the democratization of information is what we're currently living no one controls it and this is a this is a huge problem that we have to contend with as we think about reaching audiences and about this bigger problem we're addressing of how do you peacefully mediate difference in society if people cannot agree on basic facts and when the provision of those facts is now outside in many contexts the hands of the traditional gatekeepers the professional journalists and content creators so I just wanted to mention that we understand that there never was a time in the world when things were perfect in terms of information well let me continue to go around on this first question with our panelists Jacqueline please come in yeah thank you Bruce and actually I'm echoing what Slovoran and Marius but also you just mentioned unfortunately I would like to confirm the thesis I think stressing facts alone will not suffice and what we see as biggest challenges is the inability of people to identify trusted sources of information and you mentioned it yourself especially now that social media have come up so drastically with content generation and distribution in everybody's hands and that is one of the areas which is causing the the issue it's also about access to fact-based information in a language or a format which is easy to understand for the audience and that's not always the case so it is also about skills needed to interpret to identify and to understand whether it's a trustful source or not and I believe it's also about you also see a lack of trust and sticking to the community you know whether this community is really looking at trusted information or is spreading fake news or fake information so it's also about a lack of trust in the the general information sources you see so I think these are adding to what Marius and Slobodan and you have brought forward already and then Susan and Adam of course great thank you Jacqueline Bukasin thank you thank you very much and I'm actually going to provide a slightly more optimistic I would say view of the situation that we currently find ourselves in you know first I would argue that you know information was never enough you know and that is because we humans are not rational but emotional at this you know and that you know this information and propaganda are not invented five years ago, ten years ago, ten years ago days since human and societies existed you know what I believe that had changed over the last 20 to 30 years is that in the past our societies had a consensus about system of values you know that overall you know we all believed in liberal democracy and that those values have been reinforced by stakeholders and institutions you know and that those system of value was upholded by simple cohesive informational equities you know and that today you know we are facing a slightly different situation that is there you know not all stakeholders and institutions do not promote the same values you know and very informational system is more complex, divergent and that you know on top of that we have malign experts that purposefully try to undermine the trust in the value system you know and the system of values is critical for how we as human beings how we select information how we perceive information how we analyze information and the fact that you know now we are talking about one or we are talking more than one system of values actually brings us to the point where you know we see different truths you know and from my perspective you know information still matters you know already it shows that even in the countries that are most vulnerable to this information propaganda people do recognize that this information is a problem people do seek facts people do look for trusted sources the problem is that we do not agree on what are those trusted sources and what information is correct or not correct and that is where you are talking about polarization now you know do I believe that we can have the complete information of informational ecosystem and democratic society is not you know we have to understand the steps of that full extension of lies this information and propaganda from our informational ecosystem is impossible and we have to start developing our response based on that that you know we and we build coexistence we will find ourselves I would say forever for the rest of the days dealing with malign actors and dealing with situation which is information and propaganda and climate with our concept Vukassin let me stay with you and begin consideration of the second question then and we'll work backwards with our panelists I'd like you to go back to what you were just saying with respect to the importance of shared values and elaborate on that has a way of if this thesis has some merit again we're not presuming there ever was a perfect information world we recognize disinformation propaganda been around forever what we are all seeing however is again this problem that we're talking about which is the pervasiveness that is of disinformation and the problem we really are focused on ultimately the mediation of difference how people can come together and peacefully resolve their differences in society the values piece strikes us we've had these conversations Adam Susan and I that piece strikes us is very important talk to that what can media do on the issue of shared values we can actually start promoting democratic values and democracy more systematically in our content and I'm talking here beyond the news content the overall over the last 10 to 20 years really bad job in representing issues of human rights and democracy in pop culture and news and the non-new media content you know we are so much focused on undermining actually ourselves by focusing too much on negative aspects we are focused too much on showing how democratic institutions are failing showing how politicians are corrupt and showing you know how system doesn't work but we need to do is systematically engaging in ensuring that content that we are supporting promotes these values promotes attitudes and behaviors that support non-confrontational engagement that support the democratic participation and then at the same time discourage attitudes and behaviors that are calling for for opposite you know and we have to do that through several different ways you know there are already so many examples about good content you know and I can mention you know like for example in Serbia there is a you know theater show that is now going online called the editor that is about integrity of the journal you know there is a 90 days TV TV series in Nigeria that talks about the local governor you know so there are you know examples here and there about content that focuses on social and behavioral change communication that focuses on systematically integrating the behavioral approach to communication in order to challenge undesirable norms and promote the desirable and that is one of the key things that we have to do calling for it this is this is a very exciting point at least from my perspective and we're having this conversation with all of us here because Vukasin typically when we speak about journalism and media content creation we we rarely in my experience in the traditional worlds of journalism talk about social and behavior change communication because typically journalists do not wish to own outcomes of that sort they don't wish to engage in that and I and I think you're on to a really good point here if I could just then go to Jacqueline and then the other panelists and if we have time we'll come back to this but thank you for raising these points I think they're critical Jacqueline we're on the second question now about if there's merit in the thesis what do content creators and media what do they need to do so please offer your thoughts on that yeah and there I also have a more positive approach I think it's really important to look at content with a positive tone of voice and using bringing it and turning it into a mix of serious content and fun content to attract your audience what what we see is that in creating large communities of young people it's really important to work with young people for young people to make sure you use the tools they they use to get information but also to give them a safe space where they can express themselves in all their diversity so that's a second element it's really important to build a community where you have a broad spectrum of all kinds of opinions and that you work with moderation strategies to make sure that those opinions are all heard in a safe space without without any opinionating and in a way that the young people feel themselves safe to to express them so there are different perspectives they need to be treated in a respectful way and so building communities of young people for young people and making sure that we use their tone of voice but also that we use their the the the the current digital technologies to attract as many young people to see what their needs are what they what their what kind of information they're looking for and then offering the content in a way that they understand how it can serve their purpose and I have some examples I think I would like to use one the Yaga bloggers in Bahuni that is a a blocker group of over 100 bloggers who were asked to tackle the misdismal information around COVID why? Because they have proven to be very effective in engaging with young people in a safe space young people could ask questions on sensitive topics and they will were always heard, listened to and their questions were answered in a respectful way so WHO asked the Bhundi bloggers to tackle the the COVID fake news and misinformation in such a way that young people knew where to go to and I think these examples for us are core to learn from we work with local digital media youth led organizations who know what the problems are who know what the needs are of young people who know how to aspire young people and use their language and who also know how to build those skills to interpret the information they get So my shorthand would be then you're speaking to the importance of building inclusive pluralistic digital communities of young people in which there is a sense of trust and and shared values that their opinions will be respected Vukasin was referring to also shared values and the notion of social behavior change communication as being a new practice area it's not new but new in terms of the context that we're discussing here potentially so I'm just quickly capturing what you two have just said and I want to move to to Marius and Slobodan to get their views on this so Marius please talk to us about how you see the possibility of addressing this problem potentially from non-traditional means Yeah sure, well if I if I am to refer to what I see as the major problem of the that we have and where the disinformation related problems arise I think the answer I'm talking here about the systemic failings I think the answer there is only one hand policy somebody was asking what is the answer three answers policy policy policy so one would be policy and the second would be in my view media literacy and we can talk about that a lot but if I am to address your question what can media and content creators can do and this is also coming from some years of research in various projects we have run at the center I think there are many things we can do and Jacqueline and Lukasi mentioned already a few very important ones but I just want to refer to two one is I think that the media outlets need to refrain completely refrain their engagement with the audiences and this is not criticism this is just the many media outlets and of course some of them do some of them fail in that others are doing a better job but still many journalists believe or think like you know in the 10 15 years ago when they believe that if they produce copy people will come and read it and it's not it's not like that and think and we have seen even the problem in covering these issues and doing this job covering the issues that Jacqueline was mentioning is great the problem is in very captured environments where you cannot actually cover what you want or even if you cover you are pushed out on the margins so that's that's another problem but still even in such such very highly captured environments we have seen a lot of good examples if we refer to Hungary which is a really bad case of media capture in Europe we have seen recently the emergence of a network of young news portals that are having an increasing an increasing success with the public we saw in Slovakia media outlet that was set up from scratch that became profitable after three years mainly through subscriptions and so on and so forth so there is space there and the second thing that that should be done and again it has to do with this effort of reframing the the report with with the audiences by trying to think about new ways of operating in the media system it's again some of the media outlets they are set up and they they think that the job the job of the journalists ended after they filed the copy but it's not there and one of them there can be many models we the one that we have tested and it was quite successful is the engagement between media outlets and universities academic establishments that has that is really working and it's not only a matter of content creation but also a great way of putting together resources and optimizing if you want resourcing resources in producing very good genres so Marius if I and I'm understanding you correctly you do think you stress policy policy policy on the one hand but then again in terms of actual what what media and content creators can do you think that a further sort of professionalization of media actually can help address this problem that is to say of course traditional measures of just producing better content engaging in media literacy efforts to in to bring the consumers into greater awareness of the content that they're consuming that those are remedies that that are valid even though we're looking at this pervasive problem of many people even when these programs are in place disregarding facts yes absolutely if you want that yeah I can elaborate on that it's I think that is the tension and just very briefly on the one hand you have this capture environments where external factors encroach upon independent journalism and again look at Hungary you if you want to work in the media you have three four options the rest is is controlled by the state so what do you do in such an environment and yes the question there is how do you engage you know with policy makers there that's a different discussion but you still can in fact and in and on the other hand you have small media outlets that appear and do a really good job and from there you can actually build a position to the systems that has to be done because if you don't do even that then there is nothing left and in fact in time you can build really good and resilient media outlets fantastic okay great I just wanted to be clear that I understood you that's great thanks so much slip it on please come into the conversation and address from your perspective what media and content creators should do first of all I think that we have to find solutions to help to the fact-checking portals please have in mind that all the time I'm talking about Bosnia Herzegovina and about Balkan and that's only inside the dye I have in the dye can give for example in each of the countries here on the western Balkan we have one up to two only fact-checking portals who are working who are working a lot and the real reason is because the every day we have something that we call here portal it's more and more of such portal someone mentioned the working with influencers I think it was Jacqueline and I think that is also one of the solutions that we have to be aware that we shouldn't target those what we call big influencers but rather to go to work with a mini influencers for example if we are talking about Instagram influencers is the people that has up to 10,000 of their followers there's the people that let's say their audience rather believe to them than to someone that has half million one million or more thousands of the followers I don't know also I wanted to compare that mostly what I read is that the countries with a bad education system let's say they are more fertile ground for misinformation media and I think that Balkan is one of the unfortunately one of the good showcases that is showing that and when we are talking about investing in youth I think that it's definitely something that we have to do because formal education system is I would say right now not just outdated but I would say that it's also part of the whole misinformation misinformation propaganda strategy so I don't know maybe in the maybe in the future we should pay more attention how to drag youngsters how to bring them a row or umbrella and how to give them more opportunity not just to teach them how to fact check but also how to create their own content how to also to let's say to give them the right influencers that they should track they should follow though one of the things that recently happened and they are really good at least here in Bosnia is that for example when we have media that is under control of the or influencers even not just media that is under control of some malicious foreign foreign influence it's written like it's under control for example Russia it's under control of China I don't know about European countries but for example I think that it's the really thing that can help for especially for the younger generations but we are talking about older generations unfortunately I think that it will be very harder to to work with them on such issue because people when they have 40 50 years they think that they know everything and that they are not really will to change not just themselves but also their opinions right now I'm talking about neighbors but my family and so on and yeah that's it that's pretty much that I would just like to underline that working with influencers is not only helpful it's way better that we are working with many influencers with more people it's cheaper and also the benefits and the results are way better I mean we did it like that and I would say that one of the reasons we are the most visible youth in here Slovenant thank you very much and questions yeah we certainly don't want to be in the category of being impervious to changing our perspective so let me just note that there's been some active conversation in the chat and I wonder if I could just sort of break format here just for a moment Barbara Bukowska if you're still with us you've commented in the chat about the importance of fixing digital market failures as being really important to this conversation and I I would invite you if you wanted to come in for a minute or so and just explain your perspective on this I think it would further enrich the conversation we're having yeah hi everyone sorry I don't I don't want to interrupt the speakers and I actually unfortunately have to leave in in a few minutes but my point was more than like you know we are so fixated on dealing with this information or dealing with the content and instead I support what was said before by I think Adam about and Darius about fixing actually the the markets because this is really the failure of the digital market and the failure of the market is by the dominance of certain platforms because a lot of these problems you are discussing today would not be here if the business model of those dominant companies was different if it was not based on the data extraction and then personalization of the content and personalization of the content that has more capacity that viral right so the content which is appealing to like fear outrage and so on so so this is what we can fix with the regulation and that can be can be addressed through you know asymmetric measures towards large companies where majority of the people is currently but also forcing them to change the business model and that's what what the the market regulation has been here always for right so and you know article 19 has been working on but it's also this can be done through unbundling different services and introducing alternative players to this media ecosystem through through regulation and through regulator actually making these companies to do so so these are the measures which do not focus on the content right so which will not try to remove like information money information or whatever you call this this problematic content but it will address the online failure of the market right so that's number one but number two actually what also want to challenge some of the issues which have been said before that we think that it's it's social media and the internet which is leading to polarized societies but I think that actually is the other way around that this information and these problems are actually a symptom of a much deeper social problems you know market market downturn social inequality the huge kind of problems economic problems in the society and sorry this is a very kind of Marxist attitude but but really we will not solve any of these problems and we will not solve the problem trust in the society or how people are drawn to this content if we do not address offline problems right and really that this information has always been a symptom of deeper economic and social problem not the cause of them right thank you very much for that I am I want to go to Adam has his hand up and anyone else we have three minutes left in the body of the conversation that we planned the full hour and I want to note that we do want to look at what the next year might bring in terms of continued activity conversation discussion around the issues that we're talking about here so I want to Adam please come in and then I'd like to get very quickly suggestions or simply affirmation from the panelists and anyone on the call around how we might explore a new area of practice into 2022 so Adam please and Jacqueline thank you very much yes Barbara I I completely agree with you these these are these systemic problems the the underlying premise of my idea my central idea here is not that not addressing them is something we should attract we should take we need to address them there is no question my concern though is that the incentives are weighed against us in the fundamental realignment of either the economic systems of media the political systems support that because they are deeply inclined and and mutually beneficial and our own inability to get out of our own emotional response in this information space present us with a challenge that just may in fact not be fixable we may be able to correct components of it but systemically it may just be beyond our capacity and if that is the case and this is the question that I'd like to reframe maybe for the next for the last minute from everybody or if we have it we can go a little bit longer what else then what else then how then might we proceed to reimagine what civil discourse looks like if we are not able to fix the information systems surround us what then is the next step in terms of the reconstitution of some form of mechanism to mediate difference and that for me is the central problem I don't suggest that we that we should not try to fix it much of the conversation around the democracy summit is fundamentally focused on how we fix those things I'm not suggesting that's not a good conversation this is the other conversation what happens if we can't and that for me is I welcome everybody involved here to suggest for as long as we can stay on what is it that we might look at over the next period of time for ways to reconsider this problem set and what else we might be able to do if we cannot fix this thanks Adam that's great and Jacqueline I think you've had your hand up yeah and I would I would like to cut it into pieces I think systemic change is needed and the digital marketplace plays a big role I do think we also need to look at the perspectives of young people in our case young people the perspectives of the audience what do they need and how can we make sure that they connect and are able to look at information and I think investing in moderation strategies where we bring diverse groups of people together and make sure that they are able to have a dialogue in a respectful way listening to other opinions but also sharing their own opinions and able to put it all together and build their own story to make an informed decision that's the other side I would try to look at and that is about a digital media organization which is focusing on change in society and I think the role of media organizations has completely changed so digital media organizations really enter into an interaction it's not about spreading messages anymore it's really about interacting with your audience and listening answering their questions but also trying to build their perspectives and I can go on for ages but I'll stop here thanks that's great that's great we are just now past time so anyone who has to leave the conversation that we understand that we build it as an hour we do have another 15 minutes or 13 minutes now to continue the conversation Adam has laid out a very provocative question it was our third question here about what the next year might look like and how we would go forward so I want to invite our panelists and then anyone on the call to come into this conversation now and give us some thoughts about what are some of the next steps we might take what if again as Adam says the system is not fixable or even if parts of it could be remedied do we still not have a problem that Jacqueline is referring to here in terms of the trust we wish to establish and the shared values within communities of people who will listen to one another and will engage in mediating difference without resorting to violence which ultimately again is a concern that we have in the context of building democracy and the summit for democracy conversation so let's move it Marius please come in and then Sure I did I think Vukasin raised first Yes Vukasin go ahead Yeah go ahead Vukasin Thank you Thank you So look first I have to say you know I'm a big fan of game theory and from my perspective you know this we are not in a zero time game here you know this is an infinite game you know and there has no been rules so you know in this sense you know we might be behind in terms of you know being able to inform and educate you know audiences and to create or to support creation of you know about the citizens in democracy but we didn't lose this I would say again you know so if you if you ask me the goal is you know what are the things that are under our control and what is that you know we have to double down on those you know that are under our control so quite good information is under our control we have to double down and support the good information you know as we were talking you know normative approach you know and the representation of human rights and democracy content is under our control you know we have to double down on how here that presents you know issues and values that are of importance for us and that will bring us to the point where you know we can have societies with the shared values that are ready to to dialogue you know so I would say you know thinking thinking about those those things is important for me you know and going going forward you know like in the next year and this is something that administrators month of hours mentioned I truly believe in a brain and behavioral approach to human rights and democracy you know and if you are talking about you know new aspects of media work it's exactly this you know it's being systematic about how we represent values that are going to bring us to a point where communities that do not share the same opinion share same system values and are ready to discuss you know so that is that that is one you know second one is you know and a lot of people mentioned that you know issue of of a policy and the issue issue issue of good information or you know different space in which we have to do this so I will put policy aside for a second for my perspective the key is if people spend eight on average eight we the eight hours a day consuming media you know it's not how we produce one TV series or it's not how we engage with one content with one social media platform on how they moderated their policy it's how we can ensure that we dominate these eight hours during which people consume information online during which they create attitudes and opinions that then inform their behaviors and further reinforce norms in their in their in their communities so you know I would say one is doubling down on supply of good information doubling down on how we represent the issues of human rights and democracy and then I would say it's a coordination between different stakeholders media civil society influencers political parties you know and all others that uphold our system to ensure that during those eight hours audiences do receive type of content that reinforce the system that we believe in great thank you Marius yes very briefly before I go which I think the thing that I kept repeating here I will reinforce it and this is this is policy and I just want to add the fact that some many years ago I used to work for a donor organization and we used to do policy work and there was a time 10 15 years ago when a lot of organizations especially those that are supporting media development have retreated from policy or stopped funding that and I think what we have here today is partly a result of that if you if you have if you have working business working funding models if you have models of fighting capture if you have regulations that prioritize content and all that this is all policy if you don't have that then you have what we have today so return to that in a very serious way is very important and I remember the discussions back then everybody was quite anxious about that because it's in policy you see the results after many years yes it's true everybody was complaining we invest today and we see the results in 20 years it's true but but I think it's really important to to get back to that and the second thing you talk about this year and the next challenge increasingly what what we see in our through the research that we are doing is a new phase in the in reshaping the the communication system and I'm sure you follow all these discussions about the the emergence of metaverses and all that I'm not sure how much of that will will help or or not help journalism but definitely there is a new moment in the redefinition and reshaping the technology systems that that power of all all economic fields and journalism and this is really important I don't know what that will be but when when the internet happened when the the new technologies emerged 15 20 years ago many fields adjusted and if you really think back journalists and the journalism more or less miss that point and the the the large networks that we have today were built by by people in technology by the Silicon Valley and I now at this moment once these forms of engaging with with people are changing again I think we have we have to follow that and to be part of that and not miss it again thank you I welcome anyone else to come into the conversation we have about five or six minutes left let me work with what Adam posed and the comments that everyone has shared to suggest a line of activity an area of action for 2022 that Adam and Susan and I have discussed separately which is moving towards a new theory of change related to the the problem the big problem of mediating difference in society with the prevailing disinformation and break down an information order as being fundamental concerns that we have to address that are obviously impeding or inhibiting the mediation of difference in society because we've been hearing in this conversation we all know from our various practice areas that there are many different potential inputs into a new theory of change that we might look at but it's just a way of thinking about how we might move forward in 2022 that we take into account then because as you were saying social behavior change communication which is not typically in the conversation we take into account the notion of building strong communities digital communities that Jacqueline was talking about we take into account the need Mars was saying for a policy concern Barbara's concerns about fixing the digital marketplaces we take these into account but we look at this bigger problem that societies are increasingly polarized they're breaking down and potentially into conflict and violence and that we need this rethink and a new approach so that would be at least one way of thinking about how we would move forward into 2022 I put that out for the group's consideration that and any other thoughts you'd like to share with us in the time that we have remaining please anybody come into the conversation Susan Adam I certainly defer to the two of you to add any additional thoughts I just wanted to throw in there that I don't know Francois are you still with us I don't know if you can hear us or if you've stepped away from your computer I think I am here great I just wondered if you might say a few words about yourself and your work and what you're hearing because you come at this at a different kind of level than your kind of usual democracy promotion you know CSOs and GOs and that kind of industry you're more on the the front lines of working with tech companies and the media industry and I thought maybe it'd be interesting for you to share a little bit about yourself and your reactions to this discussion Thanks Susan and thank you everybody for putting me on the spot I'm Francois and I'm based in the UK and I work in leadership and innovation development as my day job but I also do world press trends and other insight reports for the industry so I mean this is a fascinating conversation obviously one of the things I was pleased to hear Adam say in the beginning of this last phase of the conversation is that we need to explore the alternative interventions that we can have but we can't forget that you know if the Adams if the Arab Spring and any of these other democratic initiatives or movements have shown us is that you can't have it's easy to break down a society then to rebuild one and that we do need the power structures in society as reference points whether or not they are faulty reference points or need to be reformed or they've been captured or whatever but in this massive information ecosystem we do need some reference points and most of the and our work to support that I think is important for me just 2022 I think we've got a couple of things on our agenda certainly one of that is to have a really deeper understanding of the information ecosystem of communities I think we have market information we have all sorts of pockets of information but we don't really have a deep understanding about how people including young people that was mentioned and other segments actually get information we make big assumptions around that and that's certainly research that I've been engaged in and keen to do more of in different contexts and so I know that's been on the agenda for a long time since the American report on the critical information needs of communities but I think that's an evolving question and we still don't have proper answers for that that we can share in terms of the other question that's the only other thing I want to say in terms of Adam is question what else do we do you probably notice from my from my accent that I have some Southern African roots but I spent quite a bit of my time covering the South African Democratic move to democracy and one of the things that I always remember Bishop Tutu saying is that you have to have channels of communication and whatever else we do here is how do we maintain how do small and big initiatives maintain a discourse between and amongst different communities I think that should be our focus not necessarily that we can control those discourses but actually striving to to provide spaces with for these discourses and I think that that that you know understanding the information space better on the other one and doing all we can in small and big ways to maintain communication I think is the two things for instance well that's great I thank you very much for that we are out of time at this point several of our panelists Jacqueline Slobonan had had to sign off and I know others of you are going to have to run given the time commitment that you've made to this we want to thank you for joining us we're very appreciative the panelists Vukasin and Marius thank you so much obviously thanks to Adam and Susan Adam and Susan if you'd like to have a final word please please do and then we will as we indicated to everyone prepare a report to the organizers of the forum and then look at what 2022 holds and hope to be back in touch with you so Susan and Adam any final thoughts yeah just to say thanks to all the panelists and for people jumping in I think we do want to kind of carry this forward in Francois I like your point about maybe thinking about the research agenda and maybe crowd sourcing some new directions on that and I like this idea that Marius proposed about working with universities and I might I wonder if there might be some universities connected in a lot of the communities we work in and with if there are good partners I know Francois your university and Marius is it the Central European University which is jointly located now in Budapest in Vienna you know our potential conduits that we could work with and through and I think in terms of the year of action you know we have different fora coming up there's the rights con which will be online there's miss info con there's different places we can engage but I might suggest that we think of the non-usual suspect places like who else needs to hear these messages and are there other communities in civil society that we could engage with and it would be great to hear people's thoughts on that and you could send us emails I'll put my email in the text box if people want to be in touch thank you Adam Yeah I just want to thank the those of us who are still here thank and those who had to leave this has been this has been very very helpful to me personally I think it has surfaced for me a number of ideas that I were maybe weak signals in my own mind but we're now reinforced let me if I can just take 30 seconds here to make a couple of connections one focusing absolutely it's about values because that is the way that people make decisions and that is what motivates them to either affect or not affect a given situation that they're involved in and then from what you're absolutely right I think a focus on the systems of communication versus the content of those communications people will will find information value where they need it where they where they can they will triangulate they will do whatever they need to do in order to extract whatever whatever value they can from their information if that value connecting those two ideas if that value is based if that value of information is based on their values and even better shared values amongst a broader community of people who have similar aspirations for their own society then maybe that is a space where an aspirational vision of change might be able to be incubated and be and moved upon and it doesn't mean that we would completely ostracized facts but we would recognize through media literacy that we are in fact being pulled and pushed and forced into boxes that we may not necessarily agree with because those are the only realms of information that that are being being proffered to us so maybe as a focus kind of moving forward what are the examples around the world of I'm not sure who it was who put the idea this group in Yemen right in the chat related to a community of conversation amongst Yemeni youth very very exciting similarly I just love it I didn't get to touch on it but his community of youth that are content creators in Bosnia who are making very very interesting content that is calling calling to account the fracturing of that society and the forcing of youth to ascribe to a specific political or informational side of all of these things are interesting I think there is great work that can be done we just need to kind of lean in on it and recognize the full problem set so again thank you everybody this has been very very useful for us and we look forward to continuing the conversation thanks Adam and that was by the way Jacqueline who had mentioned that with R&W media support of the group in Yemen which is a dynamic community that's now self-sustaining and it's ongoing just a final note on the social behavior change communication piece this is one community that I think that we all would want to connect with as part of this ongoing discussion and by the way it is led by a number of institutions but one of the principal leaders is the Center for Communication Programs at Johns Hopkins University so if you haven't explored Center for Communication Programs just google that and also it's been postponed now for gosh two years because of COVID but due to take place this year in September is to buy annual SBCC social behavior change communication conference in Marrakesh, Morocco which will which will gather thousands of practitioners who are kindred spirits to everything we're talking about we just don't routinely engage them those of us that have been in the typical traditional media development world focus more on fact based information and strengthening those systems we haven't gone over to those that are using communication for achievement of sustainable development goals and that's a fruitful area of collaboration I think that we'd want to explore again on my on my behalf on my side I just want to thank everybody we are out of time so we will follow up we'll issue our report to the group and we hope to be back in touch with all of you so thank you thank you very much for joining happy holidays to everybody bye thanks bye