Refugees from Ukraine (source: AP/SITA)
Google subsidiary Jigsaw is to launch a campaign in Slovakia aimed at combating misinformation about Ukrainian refugees.
The campaign, which will begin next week and will also be run in Poland and the Czech Republic, is based on research by British psychologists from Cambridge and Bristol universities.
Videos on social media
It is being run in collaboration with local NGOs, fact-checkers, and experts on misinformation who have together created 90-second clips designed to "vaccinate" social media users against harmful content.
The aim of the clips, which will run on YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook for one month, is to teach people how to spot manipulation and scapegoating.
"If you tell people what is true and false, a lot of people will dispute that. But what you can predict are the techniques that will be used to spread misinformation, like with the Ukrainian crisis,” explains Jon Roozenbeek, lead author of the research behind the campaign.
The Google subsidiary says this is a pilot campaign and could be expanded to other countries as well. Poland was chosen because the country has taken in the largest number of Ukrainian refugees since the war started, but that results from Slovakia and the Czech Republic could also serve examples for the rest of Europe.
Slovakia has had a problem with Russian propaganda for many years, but the war in Ukraine prompted the government to take action, and soon after the invasion various misinformation websites were blocked . However, these outlets were back online within months.
