Brussels Unconference | White Paper
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1 Brussels, BelgiumThe | European6 November Media Literacy 2018Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper How can newsrooms and journalists take ownership of promoting trust and transparency in their work? How can we reinforce the responsibility of journalists towards Contact confronting falsehoods and engaging the public in Bertrand Pecquerie identifying, and fighting disinformation? What role should GEN CEO platforms have in facing these challenges? What digital [email protected] tools are the most effective for achieving these goals?
The majority of media literacy toolkits that are available today were produced outside Europe, by US universities or major IT companies, thus creating a gap for European mindset and European legal frame.
Recognising the situation, the Global Editors Network (GEN), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the Publishers’ Association of Portugal (APImpressa) and the Forum for journalism and media (fjum) have launched a project in July 2018 for developing the European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms.
The Global Editors Network (GEN) with partner organisations will invite media literacy experts, This project receives the financial trainers, journalists, designers, product developers, support of the European and startup founders from around Europe to a series of Commission. All responsibilities unconferences and a region-wide hackathon with the aim regarding the contents and the of collaboratively producing a digital European Media actions belong to the authors Literacy Toolkit offered to all European newsrooms in only and should not be order to combat misinformation and amplify quality considered as reflecting the content to the wider public. views of the European Union.
Objectives
• Producing the first European Media Literacy Toolkit specially designed for initiating a dialogue between users and journalists and rebuild trust in the media • Promoting the toolkit to have it used by at least 4 newsrooms per country (national, regional and digital-only) • Connecting journalists with the users of news websites in a better way in all European countries
2 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper First unconference - 6 November 2018 The Global Editors Network is a cross- platform community empowering The European Federation of Journalists newsrooms through programmes (EFJ) is the largest organisation of designed to inspire, connect and share. journalists in Europe, representing The Global Editors Network (GEN) is over 320,000 journalists in 70 committed to sustainable and quality journalists’ organisations across 44 journalism, The organisation is a countries. The EFJ fights for social community of Editors-in-Chief and and professional rights of journalists media professionals from all platforms. working in all sectors of the media It is a non-profit, non governmental across Europe through strong trade association. unions and associations. The EFJ promotes and defends the rights to freedom of expression and information as guaranteed by Article 10 of the European convention on human rights. It is a non-profit, non governmental association.
Second unconference - 23 January 2019
As a non-profit organisation, fjum fosters quality journalism through innovative advanced training, orientation and networking on an international level in a time of digital and structural change. Over 3,000 journalists, disseminators, Third unconference - Date to be confirmed and interested parties from Austria and Europe have taken part in their Founded in 1960, Associação Portuguesa seminars, events, and panel de Imprensa (APImprensa) is a discussions to date. FJUM are constantly Portuguese press association. With expanding its network and focus on more than 200 associated companies, international cooperations. fjum_wien it represents about 450 national, was founded in 2011 on the initiative regional, specialised, technical- of the City of Vienna. professional and digital titles.
3 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper The challenge for the participants of this first unconference was to identify the needs of newsrooms and find concrete calls to actions which will serve as a basis for the next unconferences.
Brussels Unconference participants
1. Efi Andreadou, Aristotle University, PhD Candidate (Greece) 2. Luca Arfini, Student (Italy) 3. Nathalie Bargues, Euractiv, Communications Executive (Belgium) 4. Elvira Berisha, AGK and Koha Ditore (Kosovo) 5. Liliana Borges, Público (Portugal) 6. Mar Corral, FAPE (Spain) 7. Alexander Fanta, netzpolitik.org (Germany) 8. Michael Foley, Professor Emeritus Dublin Institute of Technology, Vice chair Ethics Council of the National Union of Journalists (UK and Ireland) 9. Roger Franco, FSC-CCOO (Spain) 10. Tom Gibson, Committee to Protect Journalists (EU) 11. Dejan Gligorijevic, SINOS / Television & Radio of Serbia (Serbia) 12. Adeline Hulin, UNESCO (UN) 13. Saskia Kaltenbrunner, fjum (Austria) 14. Jenni Karlsson, Global Editors Network, Director of Communications (France) 15. Mehmet Koksal, European Federation of Journalists (Belgium) 16. Maria Kozakou, MLI / ERT sa Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (Greece) 17. Tom Law, Ethical Journalism Network (UK) 18. Mina Liavik Karlsen, Faktisk (Norway) 19. Michael Mayrhofer, Quo Vadis Veritas (Austria) 20. Lara Orlandi, European Commission (EU) 21. Nikolaos Panagiotou, Aristotle University (Greece) 22. Bertrand Pecquerie, Global Editors Network (France) 23. João Pina, Bright Pixel, Data journalist (Portugal) 24. Marie Pouzadoux, Sciences Po Aix, Student (France) 25. Rainer Reichert, DJV (Germany) 26. Renate Schroeder, European Federation of Journalists (Belgium) 27. Blanca Tapia, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Programme Me- dia Manager (EU) 28. Mirjana Tomic, fjum (Austria) 29. Sarah Toporoff, Global Editors Network (France) 30. Florents Tselai, Socital, Data Scientist (Greece) 31. Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck, Lie Detectors (Belgium)
4 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper Date 06 November 2018 Venue Press Club Brussels Europe rue Froissart 95, 1040 Brussels - Belgium
8:30 - 9:30 Welcome and registration
9:30 - 10:00 Human spectrogram session
10:00 - 10:30 Masterclass with Tom Law (EJN)
10:30-11:00 Schedule building exercise
11:00 - 12:15 First sessions of the day as decided by the participants during the previous exercise - 4 breakout groups
12:15 - 12:30 Recap of morning working groups
13:30-15:00 Afternoon sessions, as decided by participants (more practical/solutions/ tools-based)
15:00-16:00 Final wrap
5 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper Tom Law from the Ethical Journalism Network set the scene for the unconference with a masterclass on media literacy.
The main takeaway was that newsrooms will benefit from having a more media literate audience, for the public good, to rebuild trust and to improve the business models.
He also cited the top five basics of journalism, which are also core values of ethical journalism. He emphasised that these values should not be taken individually, one should look at them as a whole. • Accuracy and fact-based information • Independence, no propaganda • Impartiality: tell all sides • Humanity: do not harm • Accountability and transparency
“When one person says it’s raining and the other says it’s not raining, the journalist role is not to report both point of views but to verify the information and report : look out of the window”
Tom Law, EJN
6 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper Following the masterclass, the participants started a discussion about the perception of ethics in different cultural contexts as well as about the importance of transparency when it comes to political opinions and independence. They stressed the need to reflect on challenges and practical solutions, such as training journalists on concrete cases. The group highlighted that when ethics is part of the brand of the media, there is a direct benefit in terms of reputation.
After the participants briefly shared their different projects and experiences. The starting question was: Is this a toolkit to help journalists to be media literate or for newsrooms to help their audiences become more media literate? Or both? The participants agreed to say both.
From there, the participants identified the following themes: • Reach and target, defining the audience • Cooperation between journalists and teachers • How to engage in an attractive way • Encourage trainings • Rethink the business models and paywalls within fact-checking • Platforms and algorithms • Make media literacy appealing • Resources, fundraising: how to compensate • the decline of ads? • Inside or outside the newsrooms? • Interrogating journalism practices • Make fact-checking viral
Six themes and therefore six working groups emerged from the brainstorming:
1. Reach, Viral, Impact: Looking for tools and ways (quizzes, games, social media influencers, video) to get media literacy to enhance its reach, go viral with sense of humour and have more impact on young people 2. Who pays? Should fact checks live behind paywalls? Who is paying for quality content (investigations, in-depth reports, data journalism)? How to make journalism sustainable and trust monetisable? 3. News process: “Trust me I’m a journalist” doesn’t work anymore, more transparency and more accountability are needed. Transparency about publishing and correcting mistakes is building trust between the newsrooms and the audience; interesting example from Norway (Faktisk). 4. Media Literacy for young people: Should journalists play a role in educating teachers and students about the media sector. Their key role will be fighting mis/disinformation. Journalists unions and teachers unions could develop teaching models for young people. How could journalism students be involved? 5. What can the European Union do in light of the European elections? What are the potential collaborations between European institutions and European news media? 6. Platforms: Enemies or allies?
7 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper The different working groups worked on extracting concrete ideas and calls for actions for the development of the upcoming European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms. The calls include: • Creating an e-learning platform on Media Literacy at EU level: Each member state shares the name of the initiatives supported at national level, the calendar of events, organise webinars between newsrooms and kids • Creating guidelines on how to engage with tech platforms, using the platforms as allies to promote media literacy and fight disinformation, ask for more transparency on algorithms • Producing short videos with influencers (YouTubers) for different age groups to make media literacy appealing to young audiences • Building a tool to monitor trending topics in the newsroom and to publish “how to” stories to inform the audience about editorial decision making process inside the newsroom (i.e. how an editor decided to cover a trending topic) • Building pedagogical tools between journalists and teachers and fostering collaboration between journalists’ unions and teachers’ unions • Diversifying the journalists’ fact-checking methods, make the tools more fun to use for younger audiences
The European Media Literacy Toolkit for newsrooms should be: • Accessible • Easy to use for non-experts in media literacy • Attractive for newsrooms and citizens • Generating added-value for the media • Building trust between journalists, teachers and students
What can be improved ?
The challenge of multilingual media content in Europe and the lack of harmonised business models, working conditions for journalists, and multiple education systems (regional, national) have not yet been deeply discussed. Ways to tackle these obstacles to generate common approach at EU level can be improved.
8 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper #GenMediaLit
9 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper Design and • The Guardian, Open door Structure • BuzzFeed News, The BuzzFeed News Standards And Ethics Guide • De Correspondent, Optimizing Journalism for Trust
Education • BBC News, Young Reporters
Programming • BBC Sounds, Behind the scenes at The World at One • BBC, Newswatch • CNN, Reliable Sources
Storytelling • The Guardian, Facebook Files, Ignore or delete: could you be a Facebook mo- derator? • Slate, Slow Burn, Tell-All, Linda Tripp exposed Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. What was she thinking?
Storytelling • BBC News Africa, Video verification and Verification Techniques
Collaborative • Quartz, The head of Minecraft on the role collaborative gaming will play in Gaming the future
Follow the next unconference in Vienna
The second unconference will be held in partnership with fjum (Forum for journalism and media). We will gather different types of audiences, including journalists and editors, media trainers, media practitioners, journalism students, and startups. It takes place on 23 January 2019. If you are inte- rested in participating, please email GEN's CEO Bertrand Pecquerie: [email protected]
You can follow the programme's progress on Twitter with #GENmedialit.
10 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper On a scale of 0 to 5, I would rate my experience at the unconference:
• 5 out of 5 = 9 responses • 4 out of 5 = 12 responses • 3 out of 5 = 1 response
11 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper How would you describe your experience of the unconference as a whole?
- Very interesting - Very valuable for contacts and new ideas - Very inspirational, lots of good ideas - Nice experiment. Not totally convinced, but not totally skeptical - Very useful, enriching - It’s always a good experience. We acknowledge new people, new cultures and new points of view - Very useful - Very good format, good participants, very transparent & constructive - I love it. I find it very important so we can be pushed away from our bubble, discuss as coworkers and study the solutions. Great to work as a group and to meet and keep track of people and their work. - It was very interesting to notice that awareness of media literacy importance is missing throughout Europe and across newsrooms - Great time, enriching, interesting - It was really helpful to extend my knowledge. It was fun - Positive, eager for more - Really interesting, especially by hearing different experiences in newsrooms all over Europe - Great and unconventional approach which allows all the involved stakeholders to participate - Very interesting but a little tiring - Very interesting, format and contentwise. I learned a lot about media literacy and found it a great way to share ideas. I would see it as the biggest challenge to now actually obtain a concrete outcome. - Interesting topics and people. Nice format and good debates - Very constructive - Very good and stimulating. Great moderation, strong presentation, good mix of structure & non-structure - It was an interesting experience. I liked how the discussion developed in our working group
12 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper What did you think of the theme of media literacy?
- Important - One of the most important themes for the future of media - Very complex and challenging at all levels - Highly important - Very important, the answer for many things - It’s an important and relevant theme. It’s urgent to educate people very fast - Really necessary - Very very important - Relevant and topical - Very actual. We have to fight it not only among readers, but also change the mindset of newsrooms that are old and stuck to the past strategies. - Extremely relevant, for the upcoming elections - It’s been one of the main unaddressed issues of European policy although it has a great impact on democracy and social ??? in Europe - Interesting key topic in this period and new age of disinformation. Big challenge and for journalists to handle it and media to be part of literacy to educate people - It was really necessary - Interesting but ill-defined - Appropriate, but a little bit too much on the media part - Essential and fundamental for the future of democracy - Very necessary and a good topic for the mix of people that attended. Led to interesting discussions - Important and relevant for everyone! - Very important - Very important (obviously for me) - It is a topical theme, especially in the view of the 2019 EU elections
13 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper What was the most useful part of the event for you? Why?
- Group discussion - Changing and developing ideas in the workshops - Exchange with participants and know-how - Tom Law’s presentation and obviously the breakout sessions - Group work on specific topics - The discussion groups. Lots of ideas from different points of view - Exchange ideas and experiences - Working groups - Working groups - I liked it as a whole, and I’ve found the icebreaking exercises super useful to understand how people with different backgrounds see different topics such as Google influence. - Getting to know people, new initiatives, stakeholders - Learning about experiences and case studies from other companies or media outlets - Briefing by groups on specific topics, really efficient and stimulated as the big brainstorming at the beginning - The sessions, because we had the chance to share experiences and learn more about the theme, topics - Some of the thematic topics - The talk about improving media literacy through viral clips/social media - All of it. It was wisely organised - Very useful introduction by Tom Law & it was good to have the short wrap-ups of every group break-out session to make sure all ideas were shared - To listen to others’ experiences. Learn best practices, etc. - Good collaborative atmosphere - Cross-silo brainstorming, networking, testing ideas on clever people from different disciplines - When we divided in different groups and we discussed on the topic we were interested in
14 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper What was the least useful part? Why?
- Possibly the early part because no one was familiar with the unconference format - Nothing to point out - The group talks where I was got a little bit out of the topic - It was difficult to narrow down the huge diversity of topics discussed. We ran on a virgin path (but it was also great!) - None of them but it was a long and intense day - I didn’t experience that - The beginning took a little bit too long - The group brainstorming sessions were useful but could have been shorter. - The group sessions were more useful when someone took the role of a moderator, so maybe that could have been designated. - The difference in countries and cultures makes some of the experiences less useful but still interesting to listen to - N/A - Summaries -- some good points got lost. Maybe use microphone? - There was not an unuseful part but maybe the conference could have been split in two days
15 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper What did you learn during the unconference?
- About new possibilities and interesting initiatives - Different initiatives and tools already working - The complexity of the mix - Various different experiences, approaches - There’s still lots of work to do - Experiences from colleagues who do it - Fact checking, challenges, networking - Latest trends in media literacy, experiences on how to collaborate with platforms - What other journals and institutions are doing and the space we still have to make journalism role relevant. Excellent networking also! - Initiatives, toolkits, what has already been done - A lot of experiences and ways of tackling disinformation that are now running in different countries - I learned that media should also be taught through projects in my country. And I’ll propose to initiate projects that could help to spread awareness related to media literacy - People from different countries have pretty different prioritisation on the topics - That media literacy needs to be tackled totally different in Northern Europe compared to Southern Europe - Many different aspects of on different things and many programmes already implemented - A lot about media literacy and issues in different countries, ideas for a common solution started to come up - I’ve learned about different challenges, tools, & experiences - Different approaches and initiatives in media literacy - Other initiatives - A possible way to build a platform promoting media literacy in the EU
16 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper Any suggestions to make the experience better?
- More structure - Maybe two days would be even better - Might be possible to have a later start so we can fly in the morning and stay the night, allowing further discussion - Continuation of the work done here - Better lunch :) - More examples from practice - Maybe not enough time, practical best practices - Using case studies/tech tools and test ideas/asses prototypes - Maybe try two days and add more speakers to help boost the brainstorming and to know what’s already being developed - Slightly longer breaks to allow to meet - A little bit more time. Just 6 or 7 hours were not enough to address much topics and get deeper on them - Maybe an idea to do it next time on 2 days to be more prolific and efficient - More interactivity (videos, exercises as at the beginning) - Keep going with the unconference - People should prepare better beforehand - Invite more people from Facebook, Google, and so on - We need to think out of the box and address issues faster - I think the second session could have built more clearly on the morning session, it felt a bit like it opened up new points - A bit more concrete themes to debate - Do over two days, arrive Monday morning, leave Tuesday afternoon - Divide conference in two days
17 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper What theme(s) would interest you for a future unconference?
- How to involve relevant groups - How AI will influence media and newsrooms - Codes of ethics - Media literacy & disinformation - Digitalisation of media, new tools & philosophies - Media literacy, especially for editors, journalists & newsrooms - Journalists as teachers for media literacy examples - Audience engagement, local reporting, diversity within newsrooms - European elections, alternative storytelling - Migrations, grants, extreme right - More case studies explained and feedback about if they worked or what could be done to improve the reach and impact - Fact checking, ethics in journalism, journalists’ safety - Media literacy in school specifically - Data journalism, writing quality (courses), video as an alternative to text for journalism - Is social media good for journalism? How do we keep people informed who are not actively interested in the news or journalism - Journalism ethics and media studies in Europe - How to fight dis/mis/malinformation, teaching/children, journalism/media literacy, etc. - Media literacy in view of the 2019 EU election
18 The European Media Literacy Toolkit for Newsrooms | Brussels Unconference White Paper