site.btaBulgaria’s Youth Fact-Checking Network Grows

Bulgaria has one of the lowest media literacy indices in the European Union. This trend can be reversed by developing a range of related skills - critical thinking, fact-checking skills, reading literacy and others, according to the education platform prepodavame.bg.

The international MediaWise project works on increasing media literacy among people of different ages by creating a network of youth who can verify popular claims in the media and social networks, and who want to fight against misinformation on the internet. The Bulgarian teen fact-checking network includes 15 young people from all over Bulgaria who are already posting their first fact-checking videos on social media.

Before they start fact-checking, the high school students go through training led by the team of the educational platform prepodavame.bg and experienced professionals from the Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria.

In addition to media literacy, the teenagers also learn how to present their checks. They do research using digital tools, write scripts, shoot their reports in front of a camera and edit videos in a suitable format for the most popular platforms.

"It is important for us that students know the different ways they can verify the information they encounter every day on the internet - through photo or video analysis and artificial intelligence recognition tools, by searching at least two independent sources, by comparing data and time," says Ivan Popov, project coordinator for Bulgaria, and member of the team of the website prepodavame.bg.