International media experts and the public meet for relaunch of the Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory at UM

Media experts from around the Mediterranean held a public event at the University of Malta on Thursday 30 October on the theme of fighting disinformation and empowering society.

This interactive event marked the start of the second round of the Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory (MedDMO), an EU-funded project bringing together journalists, media literacy experts and researchers in Malta, Greece and Cyprus, as well as from the international news agency, Agence France-Presse. The University of Malta’s Department of Media and Communications, one of MedDMO’s local partners, hosted the consortium’s two-day plenary meeting between 30 and 31 October.

On the first day, journalists, students, researchers, academics, activists, NGOs and others gathered to meet MedDMO’s international team at the University of Malta’s Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences.

The team presented snapshots of its work and processes – including fact-checking and disinformation investigation, media literacy training, and the monitoring of media pluralism in each country.

The presentations were followed by a lively interactive panel discussion on disinformation in Malta and beyond, with the participation of representatives from Times of Malta (MedDMO’s other local partner), the Malta Communications Authority and AFP, as well as interventions from the floor, which included comments by a representative of the European Commission and by the president of the Institute of Maltese Journalists.

Points discussed by the panel and the floor include the severity of coordinated trolling and online harassment of journalists in Malta – one academic cited the dehumanisation campaign targeted at Daphne Caruana Galizia as one of the worst examples of this – the need to engage young age groups through innovative media methods, and the lack of proper media literacy education in schools.

MedDMO works to fight disinformation and promote a healthier information space - an effort in which we all play a role.

More about MedDMO

Launched in 2022, the MedDMO project has just been renewed by the European Commission and will run for at least another three years. MedDMO is part of a much wider international effort as one of the 14 hubs under the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). In the past few years, it has been working to foster a healthier information space locally and beyond our shores through fact-checking activities, disinformation analysis, and media literacy campaigns and training. Local partners are Times of Malta and the University of Malta’s Department of Media and Communications.