The first session of the series of the four-session online project happened on Saturday, 5th of September 2020, at 3pm GMT ,
55 participants (including the volunteers) from different countries such as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, attended the session.
The speaker of this session was Yasser Machat from Tunisia. He is a content and media specialist at FHI360, a youtuber and influencer and a TJSP and ERASMUS alumnus. Yasser gave an informative presentation about the topic of “Fake News”.
The speaker started by introducing himself to the participants, and then displayed briefly, what he is going to talk about by giving the outline of his presentation. The 30-minute long presentation consists of four main parts. First, the speaker explained thoroughly what fake news is. Second, he stated the possible reasons why people would make fake news and the purpose they seek to achieve by doing that. He also provided some concrete examples of notable fake news that were spread around the world. Third, he detailed the impact of such news on the individual. Yasser then ended the presentation by giving three noteworthy ways, through which one can spot fake news and avoid its negative impact on them. The three steps that one should execute when discovering any piece of news are, in brief : checking the source of the news, developing a critical mindset and examining the evidences provided in the piece of news.
The session was facilitated by Syrine Landolsi and Syrine Ouled Marzouk, the facilitators of the project sessions. Syrine Ouled Marzouk started by introducing the topic of the session and the speaker, as well as some ground rules that should be followed by everyone throughout the session. She also took part in reading the participants questions to the speaker. As for Syrine Landolsi, she began by asking the speaker for more details about him and his profile, as well as the content of his presentation, in order to have a deeper understanding of what he talked about, after he finished his presentation. She also read the participants questions.
Overall, the session was a very interactive and dynamic one. For about half an hour, the participants and the volunteers had the chance to ask questions and interact with the speaker. Thanks to the facilitations of the volunteers and team leaders and the reactive participants, there was much interaction between everyone during the session. The speaker was also responsive to the enquiries, and shared many important points from his personal experiences.
The session was interesting and informative, and especially in the question/answer part, the intervention of different people made it even more interesting, as the attendees were able to hear and learn from each other’s view points and have their questions answered by experienced and qualified people.
Yasser Machat provided the participants with insight into the topic of fake news. In the last part of the presentation, he gave tips ( stated in the answer of the 4th question above) that help us stay away from fake news in order to prevent the mental issues they may entail. Such tips seem to be crucial for those who spend a long time browsing the different social media platforms, as they are often threatened by the mental damage that an online article, an image or a video might cause.
The content of session was eye-opening. The speaker approached this important topic very well and thanks to the reactive participants, much informative content was provided for everyone.
As the content of the session was so interesting and compelling, probably more time for discussion and interaction would help the participant gain more insight, learn more about the topic, and eventually benefit more from the sessions. Ishrak Arfaoui
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