Because of covid-19, several cultural events in Brazil were canceled or postponed, which impacted the lives of several artists. In the same way, educators and students were facing problems ranging from the lack of classes to Infodemia or excessive information or misinformation, without being prepared to deal with this reality. Realizing how these issues intersect, the project supported educators, students and families to share experiences and ideas about misinformation, fake news, media, information literacy and possible solutions.
Overall outcomes and impact
The main activities carried out were five workshops of four hours each, on five Saturdays with professionals from several regions of Brazil. Different perspectives for media education were shared, in addition to an international seminar with representatives from nine countries, including Brazil and eight members of the European community. Experiences and ideas about misinformation, fake news, media, information literacy and possible solutions were given. EUNIC Brasilia believes that the contributions given by the trainers made it possible to broaden the horizons of educators, students and families regarding the topic, especially since it's known that many educators will use what they have learned in future projects, as seen in their statements at the end of the workshops. This will be more impactful after the edition of the bilingual e-book (Portuguese / English) with texts from the workshop trainers and some seminar speakers, in order to give more visibility to the project. The e-book is planned to be published by the end of January, 2022. The biggest adaptation that occurred in the project presented carried out was the fact that the workshops were carried out online, due to covid-19.
Additionally, the project gained new partners who believed in the importance of this training and started to sign it as "institutional support", just publicizing the training in their networks and committing to use the final training e-book. SOS Imprensa (University of Brasília); RENOI (National Network of Press Observatories); Media Observatory: Human Rights, Policies, Systems and Transparency of the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES); National Network to Combat Disinformation (RNCD), Alicerce Group and Education, Language and Art Laboratory of the Distance Education Center of the State University of Santa Catarina (LELA/CEAD/UDESC) have become partners.
Challenges and learnings
The main challenge was a live event, with participants from different nationalities: Germany, Brazil, Belgium, Finland, France, Slovenia, Italy and Sweden. But with the active participation of the member states involved, it allowed access to excellent speakers and projects related to the theme. With the return of face-to-face activities in Brazil, unfortunately there weren't many people watching the live event. This was overcome in the post event, in which there were many visualizations. There are currently 576 views on the Europe Week channel and 130 views on the European Union channel in Brazil on YT. These results demonstrate the relevance of the theme. As a learning experience, EUNIC Brasilia believes that holding the event live is only justified when there is great interaction among the public and the participants. After this experience, a few changes were taken into consideration for future events including
recording the interviews with international participants previously and also dividing the material into thematic blocks to facilitate availability for the viewer who can watch it again at any time.
Feedback from participants
Participants from the training "Media Education and Combating Misinformation - The role of art" positive feedback about the event, highlighting the necessity of the training for their professional life and how the training gave them material to use further in their own capacity.
