Held for the first time on March 19 in Moscow, the Media Literacy Day is a major event for school students studying journalism in their educational institutions who want to learn the intricacies of digital journalism and artificial intelligence. The initiative was co-sponsored by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, School No. 1474 and NashPress National School Press Agency.
The event brought together 200 school students from around Moscow who enrolled in a specialized program to study mass media in their respective schools. They will build their careers as journalists, essay writers, and bloggers, and have a keen interest in learning about the media industry and the technology driving it. All the participants received presents from the Coordination Center’s digital literacy project Study the Internet – Govern it! They got notebooks with useful prompts on what it means to be an IT journalist, what kinds of information can be used and how it can be verified, as well as on teaming up with AI to write a good story which must also be accurate.
Principal of School No. 1474 Irina Kurchatkina opened the Media Literacy Day. In her remarks, she talked about the importance of media literacy in today’s world and that that without it, it would be hard for people to find their bearings in the media space and distinguish facts from fiction.
The presentation by Head of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Press Service Irina Pyzhova was one of the event’s highlights. Irina started by launching the DOT Journalism contest for professional and beginning IT journalists in the Young Correspondent category, and invited to take part in this competition all school students attending the Media Literacy Day who prepare a report about this gathering for their school publications.
Irina also shared her personal experience by describing the winding road that led her to the ICT sector, and the skills a person needs to lead a press service of a digital company. She talked about finding a proper way to present projects on internet addressing for the media and build lasting relations with journalists specializing in the digital sector.
“Most of the youngsters attending the Media Literacy Day want to become journalists, and we expect them to submit their entries for the DOT Journalism contest. I believe that they benefited from getting an insight into the workings of a professional PR function and how a press service does its job, since most of public relations professionals have a background in journalism, or vice versa,” Irina Pyzhova pointed out.
The next block focused on AI and the way it affects the media. It included a lesson by Lidiya Karshakova, who is in charge of interactive educational programs at NashPress and holds a PhD in Technical Esthetics and Design. From her presentation, titled Red Flags When Using AI, the audience learned how AI changed the way the media works, from generated news articles to deep fakes. She talked about identifying generated videos, and why fake voices and interviews are serving as weapons of misinformation, as well as how journalists can identify fakes in order to retain the trust of their audiences.
After all this theory, there was an interactive meeting with a professional IT journalist. Head of Technology desk at Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, expert at ROCIT, and author of the Toxic Digit channel, Oleg Kapranov, took questions from teenagers on IT and journalism. Students asked questions about professional secrets, career opportunities and how to start out in IT journalism. There were quite a few questions on journalists using AI assistants, since school students wanted to know whether using neural networks in the media industry was justified and what kind of advantages could they get by teaming up with AI.
Oleg Kapranov offered a detailed insight into these matters by saying that neural networks could simplify routine tasks, such as gathering and structuring information, generating a transcript of an interview or creating an outline for a news article. However, the speaker stressed that AI was just a tool which could not take the journalist’s place since people still have to verify facts and offer their unique perspective and style.
The debate took place in a genuinely positive and open atmosphere where anyone could ask a question and get an honest detailed answer from a professional journalist. Those who asked the most interesting questions received jackets with .RU and .РФ logos as presents from the Coordination Center.
In conclusion, representatives of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ talked about their podcast, Digital Reality, which offers weekly reports about the latest news in the digital media and high technology sectors.
The first Media Literacy Day had a packed agenda, enabling its participants to get new insights and inspiration. It may have offered them a new way of looking at IT journalism and inspire students to choose it as their future profession. The organizers plan to hold the Media Literacy Day annually.
