MEKK

The 28th March MEKK’s Samba Badji will take part in an online panel on Fake News and Disinformation : Consequences of Fake News and Disinformation on Democracy, How to resist?

MEKK’s Oleksandra Hrybenko and Kristin Skare Orgeret met with President Sergiy Tomilenko and Vice President Lina Kushch of the Union of Journalists of Ukraine, together with the Director of the Institute of Journalism (IJ) Siri Skaalmo and Norwegian Union of Journalists (NJ)’s Eva Stabell.

One of the key priorities of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine is to restart media in the de-occupied and frontline territories and thanks to international partners, they now provide support for 20 local newspapers fighting Russian propaganda.

The discussions included updates on the situation and safety of Ukrainian journalists and freelancers working on the frontline, the need for training for media workers, insurance, and technical equipment.

On March 10th, the research group MEKK organized the launch of Kjetil Selvik and Jacob Høiglit’s book Journalism in the Grey Zone. Pluralism and Media Capture in Lebanon and Tunisia.

The book explores the political role of journalism in the hybrid situations of Lebanon and Tunisia where democratic and nondemocratic elements coexist. Through interviews with a large number of journalists in different positions and analyses of key events in recent years, the book explains the tensions that media instrumentalization creates in the news media and how journalists navigate conflicting pressures from powerholders and a marginalized populace.

After a presentation of the book by Kjetil Selvik and Jacob Høiglit, Elisabeth Eide led the discussions with the two authors and took questions from the floor.

MEKK’s Oleksandra Hrybenko talked to Nobel laureate Jody Williams about solidarity, activism, and Ukraine’s brave women and men in an event organized by Nobel Peace Centre and Nobel Women’s initiative in Oslo on 24th January.

Jody Williams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, jointly with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), for her work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines.

The film Oh, Sister!, a documentary about six women facing the challenges of the ongoing Russian invasion, and fighting for peace, justice, and freedom in Ukraine was screened for the first time in Norway.

In the third short doc from Ethiopia, it becomes evident that the media public’s lack of education and digital literacy disturbs them from consuming filtered information. Elham Ali Mehammed describes how her motivation to defend herself and Ethiopia’s communities encourage her to work with youth and instruct them on the information disorder.

The DDMAC video about Rohobot Ayalew visualizes how her position as a fact checker at HaqCheck is essential to track misleading edits of war footage spread on social media. Her personal story illustrates how disinformation and hate speech can be a direct threat to someone’s life as it may incite hate crimes.

The documentary is part of the DDMAC (Decoding Digital Media in African Regions of Conflicts) research project and is made by Loretta van der Horst.

Text by Luca de Bruls, DDMAC, University of Leiden

The DDMAC research project proudly presents you with the visual results of a field trip to Ethiopia. During the project group’s stay in Addis Ababa, documentary filmmaker Loretta van der Horst shot short documentaries to make insightful how three Ethiopians deal with the information disorder in times of surging conflict. The short documentaries tell the stories of Samuel Getachew, Rohobot Ayalew, and Elham Ali Mehammed, who as journalists and fact-checkers combat the growing amount of false information in unique ways.

The video about Samuel Getachew shows the importance of social media in the Ethiopian conflict. As it becomes clear that the safety of journalists is under attack, the local producer for Al-Jazeera demonstrates how contending ethnic and political groups and a disparity in regional media coverage further excaberates the information disorder.

In a commentary in the Daily Monitor, the MA-student and part of the Norpart program at OsloMet university, Nelson Bahati, argues that the recently amended law on Computer Misuse curtails freedom of speech in Uganda.

The law is highly controversial and Nelson Bahati believes its amendment proves of “an iron hand on cybercrimes, malicious and uninvited information, false news” and also sees it as a violation of “any individual’s freedom and rights through the media”.

Please find the full commentary here.

Thank you to all who participated in making the 8th International Conference on the Safety of Journalists a success!

Among other things it resulted in this open letter to Elon Musk :

A call for action against gendered online violence!

By, Theodora Theodory, MA-student, OsloMet

At least 46 journalists and 4 media workers were killed globally since January 2021 and 508 journalists and 21 media workers are currently in prison. Speaking at the 8th International Conference on the safety of Journalists, Christen Krogh the Rector (Vice Chancellor) at OsloMet
University said that their death and imprisonment were linked to their journalistic activities.

These incidents compelled Tanja K. Hegge the General Secretary of the UNESCO commission in Norway – to call for United Nations and other humanitarian groups in the world to form a joint
venture to end impunity against journalists in the world.
“Impunity damages the whole society. Government, civil societies, media, and the world have to come together to rule out impurity against journalists”, said Tanja K. Hegge. She adds it is not that nothing has been done to end the situation; however, more effort is needed to deal with impunity against journalists in the world.

In the conference’s last keynote Dr. Saumava Mitra from Dublin City University, Ireland emphasized the need for building
solidarity for the safety of the global fourth estate. Mitra asserts that collaboration across borders, including radical sharing, regional collaborations of investigative journalism, and virtual newsrooms across countries, and microcosms may be important tools in the fight for ending impunity against journalists.