EurAV sent a five-member team to North Macedonia, recently, to take part in a think-tank and training workshop that was held as part of a pan-European initiative in media literacy – particularly for older people in rural areas.
The DiSeRa project, funded by the EU under its Erasmus Plus programme, is headed up by the New Horizon’s organisation in Sicily’s coastal town of Tusa and involves partners in North Macedonia and Slovakia. As audio visual and media experts and members of the Media Literacy Ireland working group, EurAV has been tasked with the development of short, radio-friendly audio lessons that can stimulate debate on radio – where older people are often found to consume news and information – or through podcast platforms.
“The meeting in Bitola highlighted the scale of the challenge that we all face in fighting misinformation, disinformation and malinformation,” explained Isa Marín, a spokesperson for EurAV. “Declan Cassidy, Bill Tyson and Fiona Ashe – three experienced media professionals – were on the EurAV team, both to share their insights and to learn from the experience of peers in the other partner countries. The team came back with no illusions that Europe, and the world at large, are in a difficult time, but they came back with a sense of hope because the challenge is a shared one.”
The Drogheda Independent took particular interest in the initiative as two of the three EurAV team are based in the Drogheda region, about an hour north of the capital, Dublin.
