with tiktoks and school trips, activists take on slovakia’s disinformation ecosystem
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Loading... - Bartelomej Rusto
- 30 Mar 2023
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Caught between an inadequate education system, government inaction, and mistrust of mainstream media and politicians, Slovakia proves fertile ground for disinformation to flourish. Activists are pushing back on several fronts, including where it all starts: school.
Frustrated with the education he received in high school, Julian Gerhart left Slovakia for Denmark to pursue marketing studies in Aarhus, with no intention of coming back. Yet today the Slovak non-profit organisation he founded in 2018 with four friends, Zmudri.sk, has more than 10,000 teachers registered at its online platform to watch their educational videos, learn from their methodologies, and share them with their own students in classrooms across Slovakia.
“At first, we only worked on Zmudri during our free time. Less than five years later, we have about a dozen employees involved in creating free educational videos for both teachers and students about topics ranging from financial literacy to the Slovak constitution or electoral participation, along with methodological support material, quizzes and ready-made activities,” Gerhart tells BIRN.
In addition to this core activity, a direct response to the popularity of YouTube and other video-sharing platforms in Slovakia, Zmudri launched an online website and built a strong social media following to start a conversation with the country’s youth about difficult topics in ways they can easily understand.
One of their first TikTok videos about the war in Ukraine was viewed more than 700,000 times – a level of exposure that came with its fair share of toxicity, Gerhart reveals. But when the trolls come knocking, someone must be doing something right. Read More…
