Betty Tsakarestou, Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Nikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & President of DCN Global

Vasilis Tsoulis, Co-founder and CEO of YET NGO

Jelina Makrantonaki, Journalist

Katerina Beli, Political Communication Strategist

Moderator:Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

Betty : 

“The core idea behind our project was that disinformation is a multifaceted and complicated issue that different factors and different stakeholders are affected by it and take action and initiatives.”

“How do we bring together all the different ecosystem actors and get them all together as co-creators and partners; first to frame actual challenges and then to reframe, ideate and prototype possible solutions into different problems.”  

“Disinformation is not just a literacy issue its a policy issue, a societal issue, a civic and  innovation issue!” 

“I think mixing people is one of the challenges beyond the topics. How we managed to engage people, professionals, citizens, students and experts to consider scenarios of what might be the challenge of misinformation in a specific field and how to  contribute in different ways.” 

Nikos:

“I think that the one of  the most important issues that journalism is facing is the undermining of credibility and the loss of trust. This is what disinformation actually brings to the table; by discrediting journalists, discrediting media organizations and actually at the end opening up the space to disinformation and rumors and fake news ect.”

Vasilis: 

“We have to be persistent and keep track of the technologies that are coming up everyday. Even the technologies that we used last year can be very outdated today and it’s really interesting to see that, in the hackathon, the teams were very keen to using the technology in order to battle fake news and people that had to do more with journalism were eager to work with tech related people into finding ways to work efficiently and for positive solutions.”

Katerina: 

“We need to take into account  that young people right now are digital natives and this is something that really stuck to me during our latest episodes; the fact that we don’t need to teach young people how to use the tools, we need to teach them how to have fun with social media, while applying critical thinking around everything that they see online, because, since they were born into the digital world, they do not have a clear critical idea of how to navigate into that world.”

“We need to be more critical and we need to be more upfront with solutions. We tend to create solutions for non-existent problems sometimes and right now disinformation is a very solid problem and we need to find all the different holistic approaches, in order to resolve it.”

Jenina:

“The more we talk about what AI can do, the more open we can be and have a stronger critical thinking point of view on what we are facing everyday on the internet.”

Aurra:

“So even the things that we were discussing a year ago and probably evolved 5-10 times. I think one aspect that keeps us on our toes is the fact that young people are the ones who are driving the change and who are coming up with solutions to hack disinformation and stay ahead of technology and without young people I think we’ll all be really stuck.”

“The more advanced tech becomes, the more human-centric our approach must be.”

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Christos Smilianis, Public Affairs Officer and training manager in the Greek army.

Katerina Beli, Political Communication Strategist

Moderator: Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

Christos :

“Communication and journalism are two very important aspects on how to safeguard our societies and communities against state actors and non-state actors who want to harm them.” 

“Disinformation is not something new. What changed is the scale of it because of the rise of the digital media of actors that want to take advantage of vulnerable points of our society.”

“Not all of our people are equally prepared to face disinformation. Education is very important. Rather than trying to heal the damage of misinformation, we must try to prevent it. And one of the most powerful tools is education.”

“Speed is important. Responding fast and informing people of the dangerous situations they might be facing, in order to safeguard people from disinformation.”

“People feel excluded and this is the trojan horse that gives roots to disinformation to grow in society.”

“Deep fakes are not taking over the agenda right now. This type of misinformation is not as common as we were expecting.”

“Nowadays we know in fact that people lack the time and motivation to fact-check the information that they get. In the future, we will have more tools like Chat-GTP and more AI platforms that will help people fact-check the information that they are receiving. Although the rise of misinformation campaigns will keep rising.”

Katerina:

“You create something when you need it. When there was a valid need to create answers against disinformation around covid, we create solutions in a crisis mode, a lot faster and more efficiently.”

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Nikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & President of DCN Global

Moderator:Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

Nikos:

“In the present, [disinformation] has been used as a way to promote hate speech, hate crimes and to mobilize people against other people based on their religious beliefs.”

“People can become really fanatic on this issue, as they feel that a part of their identity has been insulted. So, any attack against my religious beliefs is considered an attack against my own identity.”

“Fake news is being formed by exploiting stereotypes that we have about others. We may have a certain biased perception, then fake news comes and perpetrates that. I think it is easier to do that with religious issues, because there are alright some stereotypes circulating against religious communities and it is easier, in a way, to exploit these religion-related beliefs that we have seen taken form through stereotypes.”

“We live in a polarized world and religion has been used to bring one community against the other. In this effort, fake news plays a very specific role, to distort the perception I have of others because they belong to a different religious group.”

Aurra:

“In Africa, religion has been used since pre-colonial days. Religion has been what united African communities and tribes across the continent and as we know, unfortunately, religion was used as a huge tool when it came to colonization, to separate and to justify lots of injustices that took place. It has been the underlying tone across the continent, where religion plays a really, really important role in politics and politicians lean very heavily on churches and religious groups and sects, in order to sway public opinion, especially in election time.”

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Sherri Hope Culver: Founder/Director Center for Media & Information Literacy. Professor. Creator/Host Kids Talk Media podcast. Consultant media & children, media literacy.

Nikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & President of DCN Global

Diana Filimon, Journalist & Member of DCN Global

Moderator:Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

Sherri:

“I think the children are very concerned about their surroundings and the world and the best way to approach them is to find ways to create age appropriate conversation and age appropriate media that they kids can enjoy, but also learn from and then build steps, so that they can step by step so that they grow smoothly into adults.”

“Treat children as civic minded children if you want them to become civic minded adults.”

“For us to build a positive feeling in youth about news means paying attention to how youth process information and what it means to be an eight-year-old,  a 10-year-old or a 15-year-old and be mindful of that and use that information on how we craft news for them.”

“Making age appropriate content, we can be serious in an age appropriate way and sometimes be lighter, so that they can understand that news is not just heavy and serious, but they can be about understanding sunscreen or about the animals; it's all a source of information.”

Nikos:

 “Younger generations are characterized by two main things; one is news avoidance and secondly they lack media literacy skills while they are very deep into that.”

“A huge challenge is: How to make journalism attractive to younger generations.”

“You can also learn from your children; they might know a feature on Tik Tok that you don’t know about. So, to make them feel that they teach you something can help them feel like they are  building a stronger relationship with the media and with you.”

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Aphrodite Salas, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism at Concordia University

Moderator: Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

Aphrodite:

“I think it’s more in the way that we do our jobs and that that’s kind of where my area of focus is. It’s in the execution of the journalism, the methodology, how you’re going about doing the interviews, sharing the stories, framing the stories and always in consultation with the community.”

“Stories fall to the cracks because we receive a huge amount of them and we don’t want stories to fall in the cracks. So, maybe AI could help with that.” 

“You know it’s really important to consider relationships in journalism. If you think about and you just put yourself in a position of someone suffering some sort of trauma or someone you know sharing the story with you, how would it feel to have a total stranger come up to you and ask how you’re feeling on what might be the worst day of your life?”

“Care and intent is very important in the process of journalism.”

Aurra:

“More so than before, so much of the information we consume about what’s happening in the world and what is not is coming from informal structures. It’s not coming from traditional journalists or traditional media. We live in an age where we will listen to what appears more than what’s on the news. In the southern part of Africa we call it ubuntu,  the ability to put yourself basically in somebody else’s shoes and understand that we all are a community, so whatever action I take has a direct impact on those around me and a long lasting impact.”

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Alicia Fawcett, Visiting Professor, NYU Cyber Fellow, Cybersecurity & International Affairs,McKinsey & Co Affairs

Betty Tsakarestou, Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Katerina Beli, Political Communication Strategist

Jelina Makrantonaki, Journalist

Moderator: Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes

Alicia:

“Disinformation and cybersecurity are one and the same cyber security threats create disinformation and disinformation also creates cybersecurity threats they are very linked with each other.”

“ A lot of disinformation comes from cybersecurity experts, understanding how to create  malicious material by using social media as a vehicle to disseminate fake information or  interfere with a country's domestic affairs. You need to be someone to tech savvy  to create fake accounts, to know how to outsource certain elements of the disinformation process. It’s really important that the public becomes educated in cyber security, in order to even analyze and understand what is being disseminated into cyberspace.”

“The newest and hottest topic right now is AI and AI cybersecurity threats and how AI is also influencing disinformation and it’s something that we should definitely been paying attention to, because AI does not have an understanding of what is right and wrong and so, AI is also a creator of disinformation so if you don’t use this correctly and understand and create norms around AI Ethics. Also, when we are developing these AI tools we should be looking at implementing data privacy and other ethical controls. We need to realize AI can be creating misinformation and also come up with solutions to fight this misinformation.”  

“When we realize we have common threats in our cybersecurity space and understand it is a technical problem and not a cultural or political problem. If we share information about the cybersecurity threats, we can make better solutions to these challenges. So, being more collaborative and sharing more information is really the key.”

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Dr. Aubrey Paris, Gender, Climate and Innovation Policy Advisor, Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues (S/GWI), U.S. Department of State

Moderators:

Nikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & President of DCN Global

Betty Tsakarestou, Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Vasilis Tsoulis, Co-founder and CEO of YET NGO

Outstanding quotes:

“In our office, we think about how the climate crisis disproportionately impacts women and girls around the world in various ways, but we also think of how important it is to empower women and girls as leaders and innovators in our fight to combat the climate crisis. We can’t assume that they will have the resources and the tools, the mentorship, the education that they'll need to become those leaders, if we don't provide these tools for them with equity and equality.” – Aubrey Paris

“It's critically important that we empower women and girls to develop solutions to problems that affect their whole communities. It is not only the right thing to do, it is the strategic thing to do! What happens if a woman or a girl develops a solution to water scarcity or to flooding? She is not only developing this solution for women and girls. It's benefiting her entire community. And I think it’s important to remember that.” – Aubrey Paris

Dr. Mausumi Bhattacharyya, Associate Professor in Mass Communication, Centre for Journalism & Mass Communication, Visva-Bharati

Marianna Tanagia, Communications Director at DCN Global

Diana Filimon, Journalist & Member of DCN Global

Betty Tsakarestou, Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Moderator: Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

“The big casualty of disinformation is trust. It is difficult now for people to believe in something, which was not the case earlier. Now, because of these words, fake news, deep fake, misinformation, disinformation, there is always a question mark in the back of people’s minds.” - Mausumi Bhattacharyya

“If you are not literate enough, if you are not digitally literate enough, it’s very difficult for you to identify what is misinformation and what is disinformation and how to combat that!” - Mausumi Bhattacharyya

“Education and literacy should be part of a more holistic approach of interventions, not as a single intervention, as we thought a few years ago.” – Betty Tsakarestou

“In order to spot misinformation, first things first, don’t rush. Whenever you are getting something through any channel, just try to process it. Just try to understand the context, try to understand the situation. But if you are very excited about the news or have any doubt about it, please go to the fact checking websites that are available. I would ask all the youngsters to do that before forwarding the news.” - Mausumi Bhattacharyya

“With the introduction of web 4.0 and crypto and the Metaverse and the NFTs, we are awash with information. We live in a digital age where information is microwavable, everything is instant, everything is instantly in your phone, you already have the information at your fingertips. So, it’s really easy to get lost.” - Aurra Kawanzaruwa

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Betty Tsakarestou, Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Nikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & President of DCN Global

Aaron Sharockman, Executive Director at PolitiFact

Moderator: Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

“Here's the problem as I see it today. Today, we now know that we cannot trust everything we read on the internet. But we haven’t done a good job as a society teaching people how to figure what’s right and wrong for themselves.” - Aaron Sharockman

“How can we combine human thinking and intelligence along with technology? I think these are two spheres that should be interconnected. How can we use the technology of deep fakes, our love for stimulation, our love of fiction to hack the hackers? How can we hack this process in a reverse engineering and find completely novel paths to address disinformation? Because now we try to address it using just logic. Sometimes if you wanna hack the system, you have to play with the rules of the hacker” - Betty Tsakarestou

“I think what Facebook is building with the Metaverse is a really intriguing area, where we have to be thoughtful about how misinformation and disinformation spread. I think we can agree that social media companies got this completely wrong at the beginning, because they weren’t designing things with trust and truth in mind. They are now designing this new way of communicating and getting together and I hope that the companies have placed trust and truth in the mind. In a few years, there will be a radical disruption in what we consider traditional social media, which will have huge effects on the spread of information and that of misinformation and disinformation.” - Aaron Sharockman

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Katerina Beli, Political communication strategist

Marianna Tanagia, Communications Director at DCN Global

Jelina Makrantonaki, Journalist

Betty Tsakarestou, Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Nikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & President of DCN Global

Moderator: Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

“It could be effective if we add media literacy and media education curricula into primary schools. The sooner the better!” – Marianna Tanagia

“We need to take into account that children today are digital natives. We don't need to help them on how to use social media or the internet, but to teach them how to filter what they are learning through these channels and how to use social media in an efficient and impactful way.” – Katerina Beli

“Young people tend to love content that is user generated, a more authentic content. So, micro-influencers and peer to peer interactions can be more effective in promoting a culture of understanding how misinformation and disinformation works.” – Katerina Beli

“We need to be creative and make the fact checking experience something cool if we want the young communicators to take part on this journey. We need to add more cheese (fun stuff like pop culture, memes, social media) to the broccoli that is stuff that appear too stiff or boring. Maybe we need a re-branding of the word misinformation!” – Marianna Tanagia

“We need to give back the credibility that the institutions have in order to validate the information. They are supposed to do the cross-checking examination and, most importantly, we need to teach people to be more patient, teach them to slow down and think twice before sharing and reposting information on their profiles.” - Jelina Makrantonaki

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

Diana Filimon, Journalist & Member of DCN Global

Betty Tsakarestou, Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Nikos Panagiotou, Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Media Communications of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece & President of DCN Global

Jelina Makrantonaki, Journalist

Moderator: Aurra Kawanzaruwa, Manager of DCN AFRICA

Outstanding quotes:

“In both countries, there is a very strong migration from old media to new media and social media, which makes it very hard to control the phenomenon, because disinformation actors are born there. So, they know those spaces better than we do, because we always have to shift, to adapt and to move and to learn new ways to counter this.” - Diana Filimon

“Young people are using their own common sense in detecting exaggerated emotions and are very well placing them as being wrong. Most of them are not intentionally well-informed, not even intentionally informed, but they stumble across information. They have this radar though, feeling when they are manipulated emotionally, but it a matter of chance.” - Diana Filimon

DisinfoHacks Project is an innovative training program that brings together partners expertise, engaging an ecosystem of communication and media stakeholders, startup innovators and influencers in identifying, assessing, and combating disinformation." Organized by DCN Global, #ADandPRLAB, YET, funded by U.S. Department of State and U.S. Mission in Greece, supported by Found.ation and SocialInnov.

– Nikos Panagiotou

“In DisinfoHacks we have an ecosystem approach. The ecosystem approach means that we create a situation where people, citizens, including ourselves, can connect the different dots of the journey of misinformation. We try to unpack, to hack the whole journey of how misinformation happens together, rather than one by one.” 

– Betty Tsakarestou