The malignant influences in which disinformation is used to spread them have a regional component in the Western Balkans so that one disinformation passes from one country to another, and when it returns from where it came from, it returns in the most distorted form that can cause more damage. This was stated by the editor-in-chief of “Truthmeter” – Vladimir Petreski, speaking on the topic “Stories from the region and beyond – part one” at the POINT conference (Political Accountability and New Technologies) which started today in Sarajevo, writes Portalb.mk .
According to Petreski, the fact-checking work at the Metamorphosis Foundation in the last twelve years has shown that the need for this way of working is increasing daily. He also stressed that during this period disinformation is used to spread foreign undemocratic and malicious influences in our country and in the region. He stressed that in the past in RNM it was difficult to talk about this topic, but today the situation has changed.
“We decided, in the coming period, to work much more seriously on this issue. We also see that now the public is ready for such a project. In March, in North Macedonia, we conducted a nationwide survey in which we asked citizens about disinformation and got really interesting results, 90% of them think that disinformation is a serious problem, and more than 80% think that the Government should do something like the adoption of a law on disinformation,” Petreski said.
Vladimir Petreski, photo: Fisnik Xhelili / Portalb.mk
That is why he stressed that the public is now ready to dig a little deeper and combat disinformation.
Speaking about the impact of disinformation and foreign influences, he stressed that it is very important to work in this direction at the regional level. According to him, despite the political divisions in the Western Balkans, media scenes are interconnected because languages are close, and cultures are close, people are accustomed to reading certain media for decades, so it is not very difficult for disinformation to pass from one place to another and spread rapidly.
Petreski stressed that the Metamorphosis Foundation in the next three years will be engaged in this direction.
The project we will work on in the next three years is “Western Balkans anti disinformation hub”. We will now expose the malignant influences through watchdog journalism and data journalism. There will be many products, a lot of fact-checking, and analysis, we will follow the media so we can really show where these malignant influences come from. We will certainly do this at the regional level, with our long-term partners, Why Not?, The International Center for Security Action – Serbia, the Center for Democratic Transition – Montenegro, Faktoje – Albania and Sbunker – Kosovo,” said Petreski.
POINT conference, photo: Fisnik Xhelili / Portalb.mk
Teona Tomashvili – a specialist in the intersection of data, technology and policy from ForSet-Georgia and Haytham Atef – the founder of eSquare from Egypt – also spoke with Petrevski at this panel.
You can follow the conference live, while the part of the panel on “Stories from the region and beyond – part one” will be available from 02:24.
The members of the ACTION SEE network, of which the Metamorphosis Foundation is a part, organize the POINT conference.
Today, the editor-in-chief of Portalb.mk – Elida Zilbeari also spoke at the conference, while tomorrow the deputy editor-in-chief of Meta.mk – Bojan Blazevski will be a speaker.
Share:
