The training “Fundamentals of Citizen Journalism” will be held in a hybrid format (in Tallink Spa Hotel and ZOOM environment) 5.11.2021 at 13.00
The event aims to develop public (civic) journalism and focuses on the development of local news content. Citizenship journalism and blogging serve as a watchdog.
In the Critical Thinking Project, the discussion asked the question of sincerity and post-truth. Often, especially diverse experts and politicians argue that Russians and Estonians live in parallel infoworlds. During the discussion, the term post-truth emerged. According to the Oxford Dictionary, post-truth means “circumstances in which objective facts influence public opinion less than emotions or personal beliefs.” Because of the prefix, one might think that the term is talking about a situation where we already know the truth, but this is not the case. The Oxford Dictionary has recognized the term as the word of the year 2016, but it often turns out that we are not at all living in an era of post-truth – we live in a world of lies, and have always lived in it.
Post-truth is not a new phenomenon. The entire 20th century is an era of post-truth, an era of ideological and propaganda regimes that seek to manipulate public opinion and the consciousness of people. For all the differences, post-truth regimes had one thing in common: they appealed not to reason and common sense, but to strong feelings and emotions. Continue reading
For the participants in the training and discussion of the Media Critical Thinking project, attention was paid to the analysis of Russian information sources, since very often one can hear summaries from Estonian journalists and politicians that there are two parallel information spaces. Estonia is too small a country, and those whose native language is Russian, only about 300 thousand people live here, one way or another every fourth is Russian-speaking, and there is no diversity of Russian-language media.
What changed? The number of Russian journalists and the quality of publications in the Russian language, these are mistakes and misprints, grammar and style of translations, and the presence of readers. Although some Russian-language media can rightfully be considered “historical” in Estonia. Thus, the cable TV channel “Orsent”, operating since 1992, is the oldest commercial TV channel in the country. And the newspaper Estonia, which ceased to exist in 2004, was the last periodical in the country to be published on A2 paper, while all other newspapers switched to the more readable modern A3 format much earlier. Continue reading Media transformation for Russian speakers in Estonia
In the 20th century, the aphorism was popular: “Knowledge is power”, by increasing the scale and paradigm of the 21st century, any information becomes power, deepening media and digital literacy, especially of young people, creating public opinion, developing reading skills and creating media content, inspiring young people / leaders public opinion to co-authorship of the media and the development of critical thinking. The ability to be critical of one’s own facts, one’s own priorities, enhances the dialogue of culture, predicting the results of discussions. Critical thinking is the ability not only to eat information, but to process it, analyze it, form your own attitude towards it and make informed decisions. The basic model of technology for the development of critical thinking, three stages: the first stage is a challenge. the second stage is comprehension. the third stage is reflection.
What makes critical thinking impossible: intellectual laziness, arrogance, lack of respect for evidence, argumentation, They can form the so-called tunnel thinking, due to which a person does not notice anything that is happening outside the perimeter of this corridor. Taking a critical approach can help you avoid these pitfalls and teach you to think more effectively. Digital tools and what you can do in them – interactive, fast, exciting and new, offers to experience success, consolation-recognition, a sense of control, unexpected rewards, etc. stimulates the brain. Therefore, it is very easy for all of us (and, above all, children and young people, whose brains are still developing and very sensitive and receptive to changes), it is very easy to become addicted to the Internet.