Harvard event posted
The webinar "How do media find room for peace" sponsored by Harvard University (see previous blog) was recorded, and has been posted online. You can find it at https://www.pon.harvard.edu/events/kelman-seminar-media-find-room-for-peace/ .

Fulbright Update:
Moldovan students learn to "Navigate the Media Storm"
Finding your way through a storm of bad information in the media is a daunting task anywhere, but especially so here in Moldova, which is trying to keep its head above water in the midst of a flood of Russian disinformation.

To help young Moldovans do this, I presented a seminar over two days for high school students that offered a guide on how to use the tools of media literacy, peace media, and peace journalism to “Navigate the Media Storm.”

At America House, students discuss disinformation

The event, organized by and held at America House, began with definitions of mis and disinformation, fake news, and deepfakes. I showed the students a hilarious deepfake of Donald Trump speaking Romanian, and talking about mamaliga, a beloved local dish similar to polenta. Then, the 20 participants and I discussed the corrosive impact of disinformation in Moldova, and its ability to further polarize the population while sewing confusion and discord.

I was joined by two of my favorite Moldovan colleagues, both of whom gave brief presentations. Petru Macovei, executive director of the Independent Press Association (Asociatia Presei Independente), talked about fact checking generally and about Moldova’s exemplary fact checking platform StopFals. He told the students about Russia’s “hybrid war” being fought online against Moldova, discussed types of bad information, and reminded the students about the importance of always asking questions about any information they come across.

We were also joined by Alexandru Ghetan, program manager for the Youth Media Center (Centrul Media pentru Tineri). He and the students discussed current examples of disinformation—for example, the viral falsehood that Moldova is going to send troops to Ukraine. The discussion also included the motivations behind fake news, which, in this election year in Moldova, boil down to, “they want our votes,” according to Ghetan.

I urged the students to practice peace media when they create or share content. Peace media, I explained, is when content creators, media consumers, and social media users make choices that can create an environment more conducive to peace. For the students, this means not creating or sharing content that includes stereotypes or hate speech, not sharing mis or disinformation, carefully choosing the words and images they use, and creating and sharing content that builds bridges and encourages peaceful dialogue.

The students seemed to enjoy the sessions, but not as much as I did. 

Alexandru Ghetan discusses fake news

Harvard peace, media event reaches hundreds worldwide
Although I’ve taught face-to-face and online in 43 countries, until yesterday, I’ve never communicated with so many around the globe simultaneously. Thanks to Harvard University’s unmatched reach, my colleagues and I visited with 202 participants from roughly 15 countries (Germany, India, Ghana, Haiti, Nigeria, etc.) about peace and the media.

MPV's Jamil Simon, on media narratives

Our webinar was tasked with answering the daunting question, “How Do Media Find Room for Peace in a World of Non-Stop Conflict?” Our panel, convened by the Program for Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard, featured myself and my colleagues at the organization Making Peace Visible (MPV), Jamil Simon and Andrea Muraskin.

Simon, founder and director of MPV (formerly called War Stories Peace Stories) discussed negative media cycles that ignore peace and peacebuilding efforts, and their opposite, positive cycles that tell powerful, dramatic peacebuilding stories. He discussed MPV’s efforts to generate and sustain conversations between media and peacemakers, including MPV’s outstanding podcast (also called Making Peace Visible), its magazine Nuance, and its new educational programming, which I will be leading. Simon said he wants MPV to “motivate journalists to write more about peace, and more carefully about war.”

MPV's Andrea Muraskin, on humanizing the other

His colleague Andrea Muraskin then discussed  lessons about peace and media culled from the  Making Peace Visible podcast that she so adeptly produces. These lessons include humanizing “the other;” finding the drama in peace stories that spotlight “making the impossible possible;” resisting the “hero narrative” and instead focusing on collective work and programming that demonstrate that everyone can participate in peacebuilding;   building trust within communities; and utilizing the power of fiction, with the show Derry Girls as an example.

My presentation introduced peace journalism, and discussed the challenges and opportunities for PJ in a conflicted world. The challenges I presented included hate speech and dehumanizing language, disinformation, “us vs. them” narratives, sensationalism, bias and ”flag waving,”  and political and societal polarization. There are, however, opportunities for journalists even during wartime, I said, including the chance for journalists to spotlight human rights abuses and humanitarian crises, give a voice to the marginalized, tell stories through a trauma sensitive, survivor lens, and to build bridges across boundaries. To illustrate the last point, I discussed projects I’m involved with that team up journalists with their “enemies” from the other side—Indians and Pakistanis, and Moldovans and Transnistrians.

A lively Q&A capped off the session. My favorite question asked how a peace journalist would cover the campus protests in the U.S. Jamil Simon responded that a good start would be to use the “inside” reporting done by student journalists. I agreed, and added that PJ coverage of the protests must be contextual. How many of the protesters are actually violent? Does anti-Semitism drive the protesters, or has this aspect been exaggerated?

I’m grateful to Harvard for this opportunity, and to my MPV colleagues for their excellent presentations. I look forward to continuing the discussion.

UPDATE--The event was recorded, and is posted at https://www.pon.harvard.edu/events/kelman-seminar-media-find-room-for-peace/ .

(L to R)-Simon, Muraskin, Youngblood

Fulbright Update:
Connecting with English students at USM
The best interactions I’ve had with Moldova State University (USM) students during my year-long Fulbright Scholarship have actually come in the last several weeks when I’ve visited with students studying English.

First, I was instructor, judge, and awards program emcee for a video essay contest sponsored by the Faculty of Letters, which teaches foreign languages at USM. The contest theme was “Fake News in the age of Social Media.” Students were asked to create 2-3 minute videos introducing the problem and discussing possible solutions. This is a vitally important topic for Moldova, which is in the crosshairs of a tsunami of anti-Ukraine, anti-EU Russian propaganda and disinformation. 

We discussed how to produce the videos during a session in Professor Lia Butucel's English for law students class. My presentation discussing shooting, scripting, and editing was like a truncated Video Production 101. After the instructional session, we viewed their completed videos during an awards presentation April 18th at America House, which hosts English-language programs here in Chisinau. The videos were really quite clever and flowed well. There were a few hiccups, like mispronounced words, but overall the other two judges and myself were quite pleased with the final products.

Daniela Munca-Aftenev at the April 19 conference

Then, many of the same students attended a conference for English teachers and learners April 19th titled, ““New Trends in Teaching Market-Oriented Foreign Languages for Specific Purposes in Education.” The morning plenary session included my presentation on disinformation and media literacy, and an enlightening discussion about artificial intelligence and critical thinking by Daniela Munca-Aftenev, Deputy Head of Directorate-General for Education, Youth and Sport. An engaging presenter, Munca-Aftenev gave an overview of AI, and drew a link between critical thinking skills and the prompts that one types into AI generators. It was interesting to see how changing just a word or two affected the results, including  the AI-produced images that she discussed.

Then the afternoon of April 19, I gave a second presentation at America House for Prof. Butucel’s students, introducing peace journalism. One student asked an interesting question about my opinion about Tucker Carlson’s “interview” of Vladimir Putin. The quote marks around ”interview” should clue you in to my response. I believe interviewing Putin is fine, I said, if it is an actual interview. But Carlson’s fawning propaganda show, devoid of any tough questioning, was the opposite of a real interview by a real journalist. During my response, I used a mild obscenity to describe the part of Putin's anatomy I thought Carlson was kissing during this "interview." Oops.

America House session on peace journalism

At my peace journalism session, at the conference, at the video awards ceremony, and in my two visits to Prof. Butucel’s classroom, I was impressed with the USM students studying law and English who have managed to stay off their cellphones long enough to remain engaged and asked pointed, probing questions. I know they’ll make great lawyers.