The trip is part of the pan-European project Read Twice, which also includes young people from Romania and Croatia
Euro Advance Association, which coordinates the European project Read Twice (R2), will send 10 young people from Bulgaria to build up their capacity to counter fake news and disinformation in Berlin. The youngsters will take part in a two-day training on 27-28 February, organized by the German non-governmental organization Alliance 4 Europe, which has solid experience in the subject.
The youth from Bulgaria are young media professionals, students of journalism, public relations, political science and other majors from Sofia University, New Bulgarian University and UNSS. Some of them are already working in Bulgarian media, while others are about to start their professional career.
In Berlin, they will join their peers from Romania and Croatia as part of the project which aims to strengthen the knowledge, skills and resilience of the young generation in Eastern Europe to counter digital propaganda and fake news.
The organizers have prepared a short but intense program packed with lectures by experts such as Julia Bayer and Tilman Miras from Deutsche Welle, and representatives of the hosts. There will also be practical exercises to recognize the different techniques that are used in the digital space to create and spread disinformation.
On the second day of the training, the young people will have the unique opportunity to visit the offices of Der Spiegel, one of the most authoritative German journalistic publications.
After returning to Bulgaria, the students will in turn pass on the acquired knowledge to a wider audience. The idea here is to use the influencer effect because young people like to get new information and knowledge from other influential young people.
For this purpose, it is expected that seminars will be organized in Bulgarian universities in front of a wider audience, where each student will present what he or she has learned in their own way.
The Read Twice (R2) project also involves organizations from Portugal (Universidade Lusófona, the largest private university in that country, which will host a second such training in March), Romania (Se Poate, an NGO working in the field of youth and education) and Croatia (Udruga Echo, whose activity is the promotion of an active civil society).
Read Twice (R2) receives funding under Grant Agreement n. 101081326, from the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) program of the European Commission.