Projects of REALIES members which support on the information front
We have already talked about communication projects of members of the REALIES program, based on journalistic solutions. Now we present the second group, which uses a scientific approach to improving the information ecology.
Assistant to Professor Timothy Snyder, program “Ukraine in European dialogue” at Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria. Head of PR and communication at the Community of Ukrainian Youth in Austria (TUMA)
As an expert in communications, Lidiia has long worked with cross-media disciplines and projects. Due to her media campaign, the world got to know and responded to one of the best examples of cultural diplomacy – the Ukrainian ball in Vienna.
Due to participation in the program, Lidiia wants to fill the gap in the communication context of two countries and upgrade the platform Interactive Ukrainian Vienna. The media platform in the form of an online archive tells about people and events that link Austria and Ukraine.
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Working on the project is a huge source of inspiration. It is very painful for me to watch how the Austrian-Ukrainian communication context is viewed from a post-Soviet or Russian perspective. Due to the platform, it will be able to avoid lots of misunderstandings.
The plan is to fill the platform not only with articles about different aspects of cultural connections but also create audio stories, video content, and develop thematic routes. Besides, the platform allows to record the lecture cycle or workshops that would can become a source of quality content both for Austrian and Ukrainian.
Research assistant at Dahlem Center for Machine Learning and Robotics (DCMLR)
Within the work on her PhD thesis, Veronika works on tasks of processing natural language, namely on automatic tools of content moderation, detecting fake news, propaganda, and also on ethics of artificial intelligence in this sphere.
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I have already taught transparent reliable models to detect Russian propaganda in English, French, Romanian, Russian and Ukrainian languages with an accuracy of 93%. It would be great to find data in German and Italian languages to expand the scope. Besides, I am looking for financing and engineers, who could help me to create a plugin or website, which could help with propaganda detecting.
Veronika’s development can help the Ukrainian information front and specialists to detect the sources of propaganda and block them. On the other hand, the tool, which is popular in foreign countries, can help to increase awareness of foreign communities about the danger and methodology of the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns.
Pavlo Merzlykin
Professor at Kryvyi Rih Pedagogical University
Pavlo specializes in studying and developing media literacy tools. In 2019 he received a grant DAAD to participate in the seminar on teaching critical digital literacy, organized by the Technical University Kaiserslautern, Leibniz University Hannover and Yerevan State University. Two years later his cyber safety course entered the TOP-5 of the author's IT courses, which are taught in Ukrainian universities, according to company “SoftServe”. At the moment Pavlo is teaching media literacy and cyber hygiene courses for students and adults, developing software tools for data analysis, that are in the public domain. And he is a scientific supervisor of winners of international competitions and exhibitions.
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The level of modern information environment and technologies are such that it is not enough just to learn critical thinking and foundations of media competence. Need to create effective open digital tools and teach people how to use them, form the understanding of the main technical aspects of digital environment.
Pavlo works on the research, which aims to develop software for detecting falsification during online voting. That already has made it possible to detect hundreds of potential “bots” or facts of personal data breach among signers of petitions to the Ukrainian president. Some intermediate results have been already published in science article.
“The question of detecting votes falsification is rarely considered in reports of online petition analysis. One of the reasons is an absence of effective tools for data collection,” says Pavlo. “Offered approach can be used by journalists, non-governmental organizations and independent researchers for the processing of other data, which is located in public domain, such as social media etc.”
Participation in REALIES became for Pavlo valuable experience that can be implemented in teaching activity and improvement of teaching skills courses.
Svitlana Dvorianchykova and Julia Bondarchuk
Svitlana and Yulia teach at the university and one of their top priorities is to confront the misinformation about Ukrainian society both in their native country and abroad.
Their idea is to– create a database for fake and false news cases about Ukrainian citizens, research their linguistic and cultural components and mechanism of influence, make public scientific mechanisms of social resistance to the influence of disinformation.
We aim to combine research, education and art for student, professional and wide community in order to develop mechanisms of debunking existing fakes in relation to the Ukrainian reality and preventing of their construction.
Specialists plan to create a scientific base and launch practical work of art studio and scientific-educational laboratory “Sensy”, which would effectively research, visually illustrate and actively counteract the creation and spread of disinformation about Ukrainian society in Ukraine and the world.
Mariia Grynevych
In the REALIES program Mariia works on researching and counteracting propaganda in international communication.
Mariia, a Ukrainian journalist and co-founder of the information agency “Socportal”, wants to develop the media project “Ukraine on trial”, which will counteract Russian propaganda in Germany.
Most citizens of the European Union thought that the war would end in a few weeks. They hosted Ukrainian refugees in their homes, providing everything they needed as migrants. But “cold winter” approaches. Germans tend to blame those, whom they supported just a couple of months ago, and call on “just to stop the war and start peace negotiations". This is a very dangerous tendency.
The project aims to warn about the possible “Ukrainian migration crisis”, contextualize Russo-Ukrainian War and clearly clarify it’s reasons and consequences.
This blog post is a guest article originally published by 1991 Accelerator in Ukrain.
REALIES - Strong civil society for a healthy information ecology. is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
The text represents the opinion of the author and not automatically the view of the German Federal Foreign Office and the betterplace lab.