During a kick-off call on Monday we welcomed the participants of the project REALIES - Strong civil society for a healthy information ecology. The aim was to discuss the components of the program, to get to know each other and to inform about the different approaches to the issues of anti-disinformation and a healthy information ecology.
In preparation for the kick-off event, the coordinators had clustered the submitted projects. This resulted in the following thematic groups: scientific approach, media, storytelling and education.
What support do the participants get at REALIES?
Participants were informed that they would receive professional support in discussing challenges in their field of work and in fine-tuning their project/format idea.
The meeting is the starting point of a learning journey where participants will be provided with relevant input, knowledge and expertise in their area of interest. Depending on their needs, participants will be matched with experts and peers who are all working in different ways against disinformation and for a healthy information ecology.
The cluster groups are focused on learning together, sharing knowledge and experiences, and collaboratively challenging the project/format ideas.
Participants also have access to mental support and well-being components. Under the guidance of qualified trainers, they have the opportunity to use a reflection space in small groups to talk about their individual situation and challenges in the face of war.
Where do participants identify a need for support?
In the second part of the meeting, participants were asked what challenges they see for their projects in terms of networking, capacity and funding and what they need to work more effectively.
In the area of networking, the following were mentioned: Cooperation with investigative journalists, media presence, access to the target group, networking with other projects, contact with experts.
In the area of capacity, participants would like to interact with Ukrainians who had to leave Ukraine. They want courageous German co-authors . Challenges they mentioned were that there are not enough Ukrainians with the time resources to write, also generally the mental state of colleagues/volunteers and finally taboos/censorship.
On the topic of funding, it would be useful to have funding for side projects for doctoral students and experts for collecting material. Funding would especially make a lot of sense for scaling up projects from academic research to start-ups.
Definitions and approaches
On Thursday, we met again for the first of three so-called content calls. There, Katja Jäger presented a theoretical framework on how disinformation can be seen as a value chain and how different approaches serve the different pillars of this value chain.
What are the next steps?
In the following weeks, the participants will develop their projects and meet in the three thematic groups to give each other feedback.