In an attempt to counter Russia’s propaganda, disinformation and promote media literacy, Ukraine partnered up with the United States and the United Kingdom to create the Learn to Discern initiative.
U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, British Ambassador Judith Gough and Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science Liliya Hrynevych spoke at a presser to discuss the initiative’s details at the America House in Kyiv on Feb. 2.
“It is really a pleasure for the three of us to be working on this important project together,” Yovanovitch said. “Education is absolutely the key to cultivating smart media consumers and to countering disinformation. And I don’t need to tell anybody in this room or in Ukraine even how important that is for Ukraine.”
The media and information literacy initiative aims to equip secondary school students in Ukraine with critical thinking and media literacy skills in order to build resilience against disinformation, misinformation and propaganda.
The initiative will implement educational materials to be integrated into existing curricula at 50 secondary schools across four cities: Chernihiv, Ternopil, Mariupol and Dnipro. School principals from all four regions were also present at the presser.
“You are really indispensable partners in this project, it really does depend on you to help us test and refine the media literacy lessons which we hope will become an integral part of the curricula in all Ukrainian schools,” Yovanovitch said to the Ukrainian principals.
The project is funded by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and the British Embassy in Kyiv. It will be implemented by IREX, a non-profit education and development organization, whose Learn to Discern curriculum was first implemented among the general public in Ukraine in 2015-2016. Additional partners include the Academy of Ukrainian Press and Stop Fake, a fact-checking news outlet.
The global media landscape is being revolutionized by fast-developing technology which allows spreading information quicker than ever before, Yovanovitch reminded.
“This kind of technological shifts present both opportunities and they also present a lot of challenges,” she said. “Media literacy fits in perfectly, we believe, with (Ukraine’s) Ministry of Education’s vision for the new Ukrainian school in which the goal is not to teach peoples what to think but how to think.”
“Critical thinking is a core competency that these media literacy lessons will reinforce and we believe that media literacy is particularly crucial in the Ukrainian context,” the ambassador said. “It is important for every country in the world, including the U.S., but here in a country that is embroiled in a war with Russia, in which Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence are under attack, I think it’s particularly important.”
Yovanovitch mentioned the need to press against Russia’s coordinated disinformation campaigns which include “waves of stories” about Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern region Donbas “which have little grounding and fact and yet can still take hold very perniciously” and reminded that “the stakes are very high.”
Gough said that Ukraine’s countering Russian propaganda is an example for her own country as it is leading the way against the aggressor’s disinformation and in trying to avoid destabilizing consequences of disinformation.
“Ukraine is an example for the rest of the world and especially for my country,” Gough said.
Theresa May is setting up a new “fake news” unit to tackle the wave of anti-Western propaganda she believes in being spread by hostile foreign states such as Russia, according to Business Insider.
She also condemned the Kremlin’s disruptive interference in Western democracies, at the Lord Mayor of London’s annual banquet on Nov. 13.
“(Russia) is seeking to weaponize information,” May said. “Deploying its state-run media organizations to plant fake stories and photo-shopped images in an attempt to sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions. … We know what you are doing.”
