The Public Affairs Regional Centre within the process of establishing its preventive capacities in countering disinformation in the period from 08-10 November conducted the tackling disinformation and building resilience course. The course was aimed for communicators from the Government Institutions and agencies as well as from the Armed Forces.
The course was designed to enable the participants to detect and debunk disinformation and fake news. Furthermore, the course as provided the participants with sufficient knowledge in various aspects related to disinformation such as the harmful impact of disinformation on societies, review of the new and complex media landscape, importance of journalist ethics and institutional transparency, the importance of developing media literacy, digital security, on-line tools and ways to detect fake news and disinformation’s as well as with the role of the Non-Governmental sector in tackling disinformation with focus on development of “fact-checkers”.
The realization of the course was supported by various Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) coming from the Cabinet of the President and the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia, several NGOs such as the Centre for Civil Communications, International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), Foundation Metamorphosis as well as by several journalists and academics.
Moreover, as an added value to the course curriculum, supported by the Centre for European Perspective (CEP) from Slovenia and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Foundation, the course participants had the opportunity through online lectures to get introduced with the ways on how to stay safe and secure on the internet and the ways of how the Government of Estonia is countering disinformation.
This pilot course in tackling disinformation represents the practical realization of the concept of PARCs preventive capacity in tackling disinformation within the frames of countering disinformation system of the Ministry of Defence.
Courses from this area of expertise are envisaged to be offered to the wider International audience (NATO and Partner countries) from next year.
