/ case study

fighting disinformation and fake news

ClientGRASS (Georgia's Reforms Assosciates)
Office

Georgia

ExpertiseIntegrated Communications
IndustryPublic Sector
Related Linkswww,grass.org.ge
Client GRASS (Georgia's Reforms Assosciates) Office

Georgia

Expertise Integrated Communications Industry Public Sector Related Links www,grass.org.ge

the challenge

Disinformation is an increasingly widespread and troubling issue. With enormous flow of news and information available today across a multitude of mediums, including social media platforms, disinformation can easily go viral. And when fake news concerns Covid-19 and the Covid Vaccine, the virus spreads as well. Georgia’s Reforms Associates, with its fact-checking platform Factcheck.ge (member of IFCN), wanted to contribute to overcoming this problem. GRASS decided to launch a nationwide public awareness campaign to support Сovid vaccination and fight fake news, propaganda and disinformation.

our approach

Action Georgia, together with GRASS, launched the communications campaign #stopthespread with the key slogan ‘Stop the spread. Check your facts’.

The strategic approach suggested by Action is based on the underlying concept that in the “infodemic” era, where there is an overwhelming amount of information available from virtually any source, there is a large amount of misleading information in the digital environment and people are often misled by false news. To address this challenge, FactChat was been developed within the framework of the campaign. It is a friendly chat bot that people can interact with on Facebook to quickly get reliable, objective, trustworthy information about Coronavirus, the Covid Vaccine and other topics. FactChat will help you spot a lie and stop the spread.

To ensure that users find what they need, all informational and educational materials developed by GRASS (research papers, articles) have integrated into the chat bot in a user-friendly way. FactChat also suggests a small and engaging media literacy course Facebook users to help them learn how to better gauge the information they find online and offline. And last but not least, FactChat allows users to report suspicious links to be reviewed by the fact-checkers at Factcheck.ge.

The campaign involved branding, creative conceptualization, media relations and social media.

results

  • 15+ TV reports
  • 500,000+ reach on social media
  • 20+ online publications

let’s work together