To prepare the participants for the 2nd Live-Stage of this years Media Dialogue project in Chişinău, Moldova, and Kyiv, Ukraine, a virtual conference was hosted as a means of getting to know each other and to provide fundamental information on the topics that are going to be at the core of this years discussions.
Dr. Wolfgang Ressmann, of the organizational team from germany, welcomed everyone to the conference and reviewed the project so far. Among new faces from the partnering countries of Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Poland and Germany, many of the participants, who had previously discussed the foreign and domestic challenges of Georgia and Armenia during the 1st Stage of the project, returned to continue the conversation. This time Moldova and Ukraine are going to be be in the spotlight. Lena Kronenbürger, a freelance journalist from Germany, moderated the event.
This conferences main focus were four keynote speeches, two from Moldova and Ukraine respectively, informing the participants about the current state of media independence and level of trust in local media within the two countries. Afterwards the participants got together in randomly assorted discussion groups to start a conversation about what they just learned and to exchange their opinions.
Mihail Mogildea, Team Leader at the Institute of European Policies and Reforms in Chişinău, Moldova, gave a brief overview of the electoral history of Moldova and outlined the challenges the country is facing at this time. In his opinion the biggest obstacles include the energy crisis as well as implementing the promised reforms of the new government, which may prove to be difficult, as long as a lot of strategic institutions are still being controlled by oligarchs, unwilling to part with power.
Afterwards Lilia Zaharia, editorial coordinator for the Association of Independent Press (API), Moldova, gave an overview of the media landscape in Moldova, stating that one of the main challenges for the country to overcome, were the spread of misinformation, especially the increase of false narratives during election seasons in a deliberate attempt by politicians to polarize public opinion. But she also gave a positive outlook, with new media literacy programs being introduced to primary and secondary school curricula, tackling the problem at its root by sensitizing the new generations awareness to misinformation.
The first keynote speaker from Ukraine was Lina Kushch, First Secretary of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine. She concurred with the previous statements of misinformation being a major and acute problem and furthermore emphasized the struggles of journalists trying to report authentically, while navigating political pressure.
Finally Kateryna Sokolova, Assisstant Professor at the Institute of Jornalism, National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, reported on the glossary of terms when talking about the russian-ukrainian conflicts, recently reworked and published by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. She stressed how important such a document is when fighting misinformation, but also leveraged some critisism. In her opinion linguists, psychologists and media experts should have been involved in the creation of the document and more specific examples to countering misinformation in media are still lacking. She then continued to highlight how much subtle changes in linguistics can imply the sides of aggressive or reactive behaviour when talking about conflicts and how it can influence the public perception on the responsibility of actions.
With this the informational groundwork has been laid. The talks are going to continue on the 21st November 2021 in Chişinău, Moldova.
