The Media Development Foundation with support from EWMI ACCESS is implementing a project aimed at combating anti-western myths through preparing myth-busting articles and TV reports, and increasing media literacy among society at large.
In order to reach wider audiences and make the available information attractive and interactive, the organization redesigned the previous web-site and launched the new one www.mythdetector.ge where users can find a lot of useful and easy-to-understand information about anti-western disinformation in Georgia and tools for revealing such information. In particular, the website features mini articles to refute the disinformation disseminated by Georgian media outlets, politicians and social actors. There are also examples of photo and video manipulations, ways of detecting them and guidelines to spot and reveal fake news. Educational tools such as quizzes, info-graphics (depicting main fakes of the months), social videos, TV reports and cartoons, and many other useful resources have also been added. The website allows users to engage through sending the fakes to the web-administrators via a “Report the Fake” button.
It is the first Georgian website fully dedicated to revealing and debunking fake news and anti-western disinformation. The Media Development Foundation in partnership with TV Pirveli also produces weekly TV-interviews and feature stories on these issues which are broadcast every Monday through TV Pirveli’s morning program.
The Media Development Foundation is running a myth detector Facebook Page as well which has a very high engagement rate among the Facebook population. Thanks to the myth detector articles, several Georgian web portals have publicly apologized for disseminating disinformation and removed the fake content from the web.
