Disinformation in Georgia – New Warsaw Institute Project

Warsaw Institute in cooperation with the Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies will organize the Disinformation in practice project – identifying, researching and fighting harmful narratives in Georgia. The 5-month project launched in Poland and Georgia, starting on July 1, aims to explore the Russian influence on Georgian media and society.

The project will cover issuing of two publications in two language versions (Georgian and English) and two meetings in Georgia and is addressed to representatives of Georgian NGOs, journalists and local administration officials.

The first publication – Pre-assessment paper – will be prepared at the very beginning of the project and will describe the situation in the Georgian media. Professional experts from the Warsaw Institute and GISS will be responsible for the substantive preparation of this professional print. The document will analyze the media situation in Georgia and will refer to Polish experience in combating hostile activities in the field of the media.

The second publication will be published at the end of the program to summarize and draw conclusions from previous actions and will contain practical instructions for representatives of Georgian NGOs, journalists and local government officials in the field of identifying and combating hostile narratives in the media.

The first meeting will be conducted in the form of intensive training for representatives of Georgian NGOs, journalists and officials of local administration. The training is designed to transfer knowledge in the field of identifying and combating fake news, trolling and disinformation in the Georgian media. This will be accomplished by discussing and explaining all issues related to modern techniques of conducting information war.

The second of the planned meetings will be a roundtable of experts from Poland and Georgia and will allow the exchange of experiences in the field of identifying a harmful impact on the media sphere and will create the opportunity to brainstorm to select the most effective methods to combat this impact.

What undoubtedly distinguishes this project is its:

complexity – through the multi-month process accompanying the creation of the final study and the completely different experience of Polish and Georgian experts, one can be sure that all aspects of disinformation in Georgia will be examined and described;
transnationality – developed solutions will be developed thanks to joint work of experts from two countries, which gives them unique value and versatility, not limited to the model corresponding to only one media scene;
coverage – conclusions drawn from the experts’ five-month work will be published in two languages, their paper versions will be sent to Georgia for use by representatives of Georgian NGOs, journalists and local government officials, and will be published on the Warsaw Institute and GISS websites allowing experts from around the world to take advantage of these experiences in further work related to disinformation research.

We will provide further information about the project on our website.

Project co-financed by the Polish development cooperation programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.