Ways of combating disinformation and fake news discussed at Shusha Forum
By: Hazem Abdo
The Global Media Forum on “New Media in the Era of the 4th Industrial Revolution” being held in Shusha, the cultural capital of Azerbaijan, as part of the Year of Heydar Aliyev and on the occasion of the 148th anniversary of the National Press of Azerbaijan, continued its work with panel discussions on the third day.
The session of the Forum called “Investment and consumption trends in the media”, moderated by Shafag Mehraliyeva, the director of the Communication and Digital Media Program of ADA University, focused on consumption trends in new media and media awareness (methods of combating disinformation and fake news).
Speaking at the session, Clive Marshall, the CEO of the UK’s PA Media Group, said newspaper sales had started declining two decades ago. “We were hoping that the young people of the time would get older and buy newspapers. But now we see that they aren’t buying newspapers today. Young people do not care about things they are interested in. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account what they want.”
Matthias Lufkens, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of DigiTips, emphasized that it was not enough to use only one platform. “We must consider the audience and be active on Twitter, Tiktok and other social networks. At the Davos annual meeting, I said about the news that we should also use Youtube. They told me that no, that this platform was watched by children. Then they introduced Tiktok, so we can be more active there. I mean whatever the audience wants, we should act in that direction.”
Defense analyst Oubai Shahbandar emphasized in his remarks that the main obligation to readers and viewers was to convey the reality as it is to them. The main task is to deliver accurate, prompt and unbiased information from the scene of the news to the viewer. Oubai Shahbandar, who said the main reason for coming to Karabakh was to convey the situation as it is here to the world, added: “It is our most important task to convey the reality to the public by seeing the events the way they are. Yesterday we visited places where war was raging three years ago. We prepared a report from those areas and gave our comments, tried to convey what we saw to the public. Some people in the world had no idea where Azerbaijan and Shusha are and what happened there. Thanks to the video we shot in these areas yesterday, we will convey all this to the international community.”
Tinatin Berdzenishvili, the Director General of Public Television of Georgia, said: “We are proud that we are building our business independently. We see that all Western media are trying to be more constructive and find solutions for the public. We must try to be impartial and objective. We must move forward in the direction of finding solutions for the public’s problems.”
Saying that the new generation needed more impartial media, Tinatin Berdzenishvili emphasized: “Our task in the digital world is to present these opportunities to the public. We don’t know what the future holds. This is why we have to respond to challenges as quickly as possible. Also, we should not only focus on the news, but also take into account the preferences of the public.”
During the session, participants also exchanged ideas on the dynamic trends related to the production and consumption of media products, media investment, role of media awareness in the development of professional media, creation of a value chain in new media and the development of business models. Experts also answered some questions from the audience.
Representatives of local and foreign media, as well as experts, participated in the Forum organized by the Media Development Agency.
The Shusha Global Media Forum was attended by 150 foreign visitors from 49 countries, including state information agencies of 34 countries, 12 international organizations and media institutions. Sixty local media leaders and representatives are also participating in the Forum.
