Disinformation only serves to spread fear, anxiety, suspicion, hatred, racism, xenophobia and prejudice among our society. It is time that a new approach is found to support European citizens to address the spread of disinformation in society and mitigate its impact on their local community. Through the MEDIA-HACKS project, we aim to develop such an approach to enhance the media literacy of local communities from the ground-up; by supporting local community members to be producers of reliable media content for their own communities and as well as ethical consumers of content.
MEDIA-HACKS aims to support local communities to be accountable for the information that they share with others online; helping to replicate the media ethics of reliable news outlets within a community-media environment. As such, the focus of the MEDIA-HACKS project is to build the skills of ordinary people to cope with the stresses and strains of society today by mitigating the impact of fake-news campaigns aimed at destabilizing the status quo. It aims to build a community media framework that equips local communities with all the knowledge, skills and competences to develop, manage and maintain a comprehensive media service to local residents. The project will pursue an asset-based community development approach to harness the assets within the local communities where partners are based and bring them together under a common community media banner intent or promoting real news about the local area to residents.