On April 19-20, 21-22, the Freedom of Information Center organized an online training course on Fact Checking capacity building and Fight Against Disinformation. The training was organized with the support of the US Embassy in Armenia in cooperation with the Public Journalism Club.  For different local government officials, the program envisages 3 rounds of training for a total of 126 representatives of Gegharkunik, Lori and Aragatsotn and Tavush marzes. The online course was conducted by industry-leading media, fact-checking and information security experts.

Shushan Doydoyan, President of the Freedom of Information Center, and Andranik Manukyan, Program Coordinator of the US Embassy, delivered a welcoming speech on the opening day of the Disinformation and Fact-Finding Capacity Development Course.

During the training, a number of issues on media literacy, information verification and fact-checking were discussed.

IT media expert Arthur Papyan presented how one can distinguish real text from manipulation, understand the context, check photos and videos through search engines, study sources, browse websites and other accounts.

In the second phase of the training, more than 50 local government representatives from the communities of Gegharkunik and Aragatsotn marzes continued the online training course on combating disinformation and fact-finding skills and to discuss a number of issues related to the field.

Information security expert Davit Sandukhchyan presented the means of ensuring the security of the network, equipment and personal (user) sector and mechanisms, as well as what are the best means of secrecy or protection of material media.

In the second part of the meeting, media researcher, fact-finding expert Harutyun Tsatryan presented to the participants how to work with open data, how to study sources through search engines.

Let us inform you that the training will be continuous, in the near future the local government representatives of Lori and Tavush regions will have the opportunity to participate in the training.

The training was conducted by the Freedom of Information Center in partnership with the Public Journalism Club as part of the “Building Disinformation Resilience in CSO and Local Government Ecosystems” project supported by the US Embassy in Armenia.