Atlantic Council of Croatia, following the contemporary challenges in spreading false news and disinformation, successfully implemented a NATO Public Diplomacy Division sponsored project that was aimed at increasing societal resilience, recognizing and combating disinformation, in consortium with partner from North Macedonia: Women4Cyber North Macedonia, which is an integral part of Cyber Security, Corporate Security and Crisis Management Initiative – C3I. This proposal shows the cooperation of two countries, one of which is the youngest NATO member country, and both belonging to the South East European region.
The project fulfilled an objective to raise the awareness of public on how to recognize disinformation, what are the means of checking the credibility of information, at the same time promoting Euro-Atlantic values, role of NATO in keeping the stability in the world. The current health pandemic has been accompanied by a so called “infodemic”. In that spirit, the project activities contributed to better understanding of the influence of information on everyday life and human conducts in crisis times, as an essential part to maintaining world’s security and stability.
The project was implemented through following activities: four professional promotional videos were produced and online conference. Showing the disinformation consequences in everyday life, the videos addressed the ways how to recognize disinformation contents, disinformation tactics and how to check and compare sources. Videos are in the original languages of the countries – Croatia and North Macedonia, subtitled in English. In a dynamic way, they provide instructions how to recognize and to deal with disinformation and actually encourage the basic questions of what to do when it is evident the information is inaccurate, fake or misleading. It is important to work on recognizing and combating disinformation, thus increasing societal resilience in this aspect.
Social media:
The Facebook page of the Atlantic Council of Croatia:
https://www.facebook.com/AtlanticCouncilofCroatia1/
The Facebook page of Women4Cyber:
https://www.facebook.com/Women4Cyber
Youtube links on which our videos can be found:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC19uKSu6h_Rq1TDu0SH2-Zg
Video with online conference – webinar held on 8 December 2020 ‘NATO 2030 and fight against disinformation’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGRxW7B6fk8
Online zoom conference:
‘NATO 2030 and fight against disinformation’
›› 8 December 2020 @ 16:00 hrs ‹‹
Expert speakers:
Mark Laity, Director, Communications Division, SHAPE
Vlasta Zekulić PhD, Plans and Operational Preparedness at Operations Division, NATO Headquarters
Metodi Hadji Janev PhD, Associate professor, Adjunct Faculty Member, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, Arizona State University, ASU, USA
Moderators:
Monika Begovic PhD, President of the Atlantic Council of Croatia & Secretary General of the Atlantic Treaty Association
Ljubica Pendaroska MSc, President and National Coordinator Women4Cyber North Macedonia, Privacy and Data Protection Expert
Promotional videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rszly6fR5NE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq33O1lzn0Y