about

The proliferation of mass media and new technologies has brought about decisive changes in human communication processes and behaviour. This fact has been recognised by global and European institutions, from UNESCO to the European Parliament and Commission. These changes in the role that media plays in the life of citizens has highlighted the importance of Media Literacy, which aims to empower citizens by providing them with the competencies (knowledge and skills and attitude) necessary to engage with traditional media and new technologies, e.g. the European Parliament resolution.

The change in the media landscape has also impacted the role and social, professional and ethical responsibilities of journalists. To help faciliate media development in view of these changes we have coined the EMAC project. In this project, we are compiling training activities designed to help journalists in different stages of qualification and experience to report more fairly about minorities. The activities can also help in the integration of people from different minorities in their reporting as well as their institutions. We also provide terminology sheets / glossaries with suggestions for using fair language in terms of minorities. The activities are grouped in four categories and published along general guidelines for reporting. Some examples of fair reporting and further information in audio form are provided in three languages as well.
The objective behind our efforts is to provide citizens, journalists and media activists with valuable competences to face editorial challenges like fake news/alternative facts, infomercials vs. information, freedom of speech and hate speech and help them to develop diversity and pluralism in media.

EMAC – Ethical Media for Active Citizenship

is a transeuropean media project about training for journalists. It is funded by the ERASMUS+ programme of the European Union. The most important learning outcomes we aim at with our training elements are:

Sensibilisation for the sources and premises of media products.

Truth isn't truth at all. Being honest while producing media content and depicting the facts best of one's knowledge and belief may not be enough to produce "true" content. Every author and every editor has personal bias, premises, views of the world. We are all affected by our family and social backgrounds, our society and context, our language and political or religious believes. We can not change that and neither should we, but it's vitally important for anyone in journalism to be permanently aware of these restrictions.
To instill that heightened awareness of self in the learners is one of the main objectives of this training course as it is in media literacy training in general.

Specific tools directed at helping journalists argue against false premises, hate speech elements in media products and work more inclusively towards any minority groups.

The second objective of this project is to build tools for the training course, that specifically help the learners to use this awareness in their journalistic work.
Recognising false premises (about an event or a group of people, etc) and disrespectful or even misanthropic language is the first step. We aim to actually develop exercises countering such media output in an appropriate way, with thoughtful argument. We want to enable learners to counter those articles or features without resorting to just take the other side and getting caught in the populist trap by using the same conversational techniques and in a way reinforcing exactly the biased and prejudicial way of communicating they were aiming to counter.