POINT 8.0: Disinformation, foreign influence, artificial intelligence, influencers

As in previous years, Point Conference 8.0 will offer a large number of sessions with topics that are at the heart of regional and global activist and political discourse. Here we will announce some of the topics of the Point 8.0 Conference.

The eighth edition of POINT Conference (Political Accountability and New Technologies) will take place in Sarajevo in Brew Imperial Society from 16th to 18th of May 2019. 

Here you can check the programme of POINT 8.0 conference.

The problems of media ethics and the increasing number of misinformation in the media space around the world will be addressed through several panel discussions and presentations. On the first day of the conference, on Thursday, May 16th, a panel discussion “Disinformation Status in the Balkans” will be held, where representatives of the initiatives from Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and BiH dealing with disinformation will speak.

In the past few years, several platforms have been developed in the Balkans to verify facts and reveal false news, such as Raskrinkavanje.ba, Raskrinkavanje.me, Raskrikavanje.rs, F2N2.mk, and apart from the representatives of these platforms, the panel discussion will also include the project “Dr. Spin”, which is a series of ten animated episodes which answers the question “What each dictator should know if he wants to suppress media freedom in his country?”.

Fact-checker Maarten Schenk from Belgium, the creator of the Trendolizer tool that tracks popular online content, and maps the pages from which potentially risky content arrives, will speak about the phenomenon of false newsrooms that originate in Macedonia, and he will also talk about verification of the facts.

In addition to the problem of false news in the regional media space, the POINT 8.0 will also focus on this problem in Eastern Europe. Dina Solveig Jalkanen, an advocate of media freedom from Finland, will speak about the past, the present and the future of the Internet in Russia. Hanna Liubakova, a Belarusian journalist and Veronica Laputseva, also from Belarus, will speak about the problem of censorship, disinformation and Internet control in Belarus.

This year’s POINT Conference will discuss human rights, and the panel discussion “Online Campaign Against Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms” will gather activists from BiH, Belgium, Croatia and Poland. Neil Datta, secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, Lea Berriault-Jauvin from FamFacts, Ana Brakus from GONG from Croatia, and representatives of the first Bosnian pride parade “Ima izać”  will take part in this panel discussion.

POINT 8.0 Conference will introduce organizers of other regional and European conferences that will try to answer the question of how such events can improve the impact of civil society.

On the third day of POINT 8.0 conference participants will have the opportunity to visit numerous workshops.

POINT is the largest conference of this type in the region and seeks to be a platform for civil society that encourages the use of new technologies – tool for education about the use of new technologies and social networks; forum for exchange of views and experiences; incubator for the development of ideas, projects and strategies; virtual place for networking and informing socially conscious Internet users; as well as a social network for exploring and searching for partners and associates and building coalitions.

POINT 8.0 is organized by ACTION SEE network, whose members are “Zašto Ne“ from BiH, CDT – Center for Democratic Transition from Montenegro, CRTA – Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability from Serbia and Foundation Metamorphosis from Macedonia in cooperation with National Endowment for Democracy, The Balkan Trust for Democracy, TechSoup Foundation from Poland, US Embassy in BiH, Digital Communications Network, Outsiders from Poland, GONG from Croatia, TransparenCEE Network and Friedrich Naumann Stiftung.