Infocrime campaign to detect fake news starts in four regions in Ukraine
The IINFOCRIME campaign will be launched in four regions of Ukraine : Odesa, Kherson, Lutsk and Kropyvnytskyy. The project aims to expose fake news and to help local journalists to verify the facts and to disseminate reliable information.
During September-October, a network of regional fact-checkers in Volyn, Kirovohrad, Odesa and Kherson regions will publish the results of weekly monitoring of major trends of fake news, manipulation, misinformation / propaganda during local elections, and provide recommendations to journalists on data verification.
“The network of fact checkers has already revealed the first trends. It turns out that the main categories of fake news and misinformation in the four regions of Ukraine are related to three topics. The first is false reports about coronavirus developments, the second is the manipulation and untruthful statements made by the candidates in the local elections, which are not refuted in mass media. And the third is pro-Russian narratives, which are actively penetrating the local media of some regions, ” Oksana Romanyuk, Executive Director of IMI, said.
The INFOCRIME project will not only help to collect and systematize the data on the most common narratives of fake news and manipulations, but will also show the public in general and journalists in particular that this is not as difficult as it might seem to detect and to filter misinformation.
"There should be at least one island of common sense in the pre-election cacophony of statements and promises of politicians, which will help voters make more informed choices, learn to recognize fakes and manipulations and start laying the foundations for fact-checking in local media," said the project's media expert Serhiy Nikitenko.
“Almost every election period is oversaturated with misinformation. Some of the fake news and manipulations are "brought to the public" by politicians or "opinion leaders", no less disseminated by journalists themselves without even a basic verification of data for authenticity, " said Pavlo Lisnichenko, media expert on the project in the Kirovohrad region.
You can follow the project materials by following the links:
The project is implemented by the NGO "Institute of Mass Information" and is funded by the Thomson Reuters Foundation under the program of support for independent media in the countries of Eastern Partnership, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Commonwealth of Great Britain.
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