Over the last 18 months, the “Raising Awareness on Disinformation: Achieving Resilience (RADAR)” project has been harnessing citizens’ thoughts on disinformation, providing expert insights into protection against disinformation, and fomenting interaction and consultation between both. We especially wanted to focus on building up citizens’ agency through training and empowerment, with a focus on encouraging young Europeans to contribute and boost their engagement with and understanding of critical thinking and media literacy. In the lead-up to the 2024 European elections, nothing can be more important that countering the noxious effects of disinformation.
Via 5 Public Debates and 5 Youth Labs in 5 EU Member States, the project provided opportunities for members of the general public to have their say on what can be done to address disinformation in various policy areas including climate change, migration, LGBTQ+ rights, democratic processes, and foreign interference in elections. The youth labs concentrated on working with smaller groups of young people through a peer-learning prism, and 10 Youth Ambassadors were selected to bring together the conclusions into concrete policy recommendations. In each public debate, meanwhile, polling was conducted to gauge citizens’ understanding fo the phenomenon of disinformation, from which a set of infographics were produced to showcase the state of play across Europe.
These ten RADAR Youth Ambassadors took their learnings from national events in which they participated and came to Brussels to bring their insights to the heart of the EU system. In the Brussels Youth Workshop, they devised practical recommendations for EU action against disinformation in their communities. These recommended actions were presented to relevant EU interlocutors, including the European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders, in the project’s final concluding conference in Brussels, where a large debate on disinformation unfolded.
What follows is the result of the work carried out by these Youth Ambassadors, ten insightful recommendations about critical policy areas in the EU: climate change, democratic processes, foreign interference, LGBTIQ+ and migration. The following aims to provide food for thought for those interested in reading about how young Europeans conceptualise the disinformation space and wish to counter-balance it through practical recommendations.
Partners:
- TEPSA (coordinator)
- Österreichische Gesellschaft für Europapolitik (ÖGFE)
- Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI)
- Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
- Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP)
- Jagiellonian University Kraków
RADAR – Raising Awareness on Disinformation: Achieving Resilience
RADAR (www.tepsa.eu/projects/radar/) aims at raising citizens’ awareness on disinformation and providing an accessible public platform for debate on the issue.
This activity is a joint action between the Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) and the Austrian Society for European Politics / Österreichische Gesellschaft für Europapolitik (ÖGfE) (www.oegfe.at) undertaken in the context of the European Union funded project “RADAR – Raising Awareness on Disinformation: Achieving Resilience”.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
