Shushan Doydoyan, the President of the Freedom of Information Center, presented Armenia’s experience during the webinar “Leveraging the OGP to promote information integrity and media freedom”, organized by the Open Government Partnership and the Forum on Information and Democracy.

The President of the FOICA presented the concept and action plan for combating disinformation, highlighting its three key pillars. Doydoyan also presented several recommendations that could contribute to the development of media freedom and information integrity both in Armenia and globally. The recommendations include: Full provision of access to information: Governments must ensure the realization of the public’s right to access factual, accurate and comprehensive information. Development of media literacy and artificial intelligence literacy: These should be an integral part of the general educational system to equip citizens with the necessary tools to counter disinformation. Strengthening the role of public broadcasters: Public media should lead in providing factual, reliable, and quality information. Promoting transparency of media ownership. Ensuring the financial sustainability of independent media: This issue has become especially urgent following the freeze of USAID funding. Creating new forms of collaboration.

You can read Doydoyan’s full speech here, and listen to it from the 48։10 mark here.