Same Problem, Same Solution?

Disinformation undermines democracies worldwide, fueling division and polarisation in our societies. Addressing this challenge effectively requires a collective, networked response. To create meaningful and sustainable solutions, regulators, policymakers, civil society, educational institutions, civic tech innovators, educators, and media representatives must come together and collaborate. 

In this discussion, experts and activists from Germany and India will take a cross-border look at the issue of disinformation and explore proven countermeasures. Through shared insights and lessons from various perspectives, participants will gain a clearer understanding of what strategies are working in different contexts and how they can be adapted to fit new environments. Building on this foundation, we will shift our focus to the future and to the local regional Bengali context. How can we tailor these approaches to local needs? Which key players and resources are essential to making these strategies effective? How can we leverage the power of AI technologies to serve our mission? 

Alternative Futures in Kolkata is a project of the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in collaboration with Correctiv, Design Beku and Quicksand Studios. 

More on Alternative Futures:
Alternative Futures - Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan | India

Speakers

Caroline Lindekamp has a professional background in journalism. She has also worked at universities on media accountability and as a media analyst at NewsGuard. She was a fellow in the JournalismAI programme at the London School of Economics, leveraging the power of AI for newsrooms in international teams. These areas converge in her current position at the non-profit media house CORRECTIV: She is head of an interdisciplinary project to identify new strategies against disinformation. The team of scholars, developers and journalists combines methods from prebunking and debunking through civic tech. They are building the community platform CORRECTIV.Faktenforum and transfer the idea of citizen journalism to fact-checking. The platform is also an environment for the implementation and development for AI-based technologies.

Indrajit Hazra is a journalist and author of books including The Bioscope Man and Grand Delusions: A Short Biography of Kolkata. He was born and raised in Kolkata and studied at St Xavier's and Jadavpur University. He is presently editor of the column Views in The Economic Times and writes the Sunday column, Red Herring.

Moderation

Padmini Ray Murray is the founder of Design Beku, a collective that emerged from a desire to explore how technology and design can be decolonial, local, and ethical. Padmini established the first degree level digital humanities programme in India at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology where she was course director from 2016-2018. She was the recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Unbox Fellowship (2012-13) and the co-investigator with Claire Squires on The Book Unbound, also funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is currently co-investigator on Gendering the Smart City with Professor Ayona Dutta, and the digital lead on Two Centuries of Indian Print, a project in collaboration with the British Library and Jadavpur University. She served as a trustee for Wikimedia UK from 2013–2014, and led a research project on platform governance and design for the Ekstep Foundation in 2018.

Open to all

This event is within the framework of the larger project ‘Alternative Futures’