The world of social media is complex. It is often difficult here to clearly differentiate between truth and untruth. Twelve young people have therefore started the media project “news4you”. For a year they read both the Main-Post and other national media and share their experiences on the social media platform “Instagram”.
The educational project is from the Würzburg Democracy Initiative pics4peace eV., under the direction of the former mayor Pia Beckmann, and is intended to contribute to the increasing need for media skills for young people today. The aim is to get young people excited about social issues and to show how disinformation can be counteracted, say the project coordinators Luzius Zöller and Benedikt Teichmann.
Zöller and Teichmann are 23 years old, come from Würzburg and have just graduated from the journalism school in Munich. They feel that news that comes on social media isn’t bad per se. “However, it can happen that true reporting and disinformation mix quickly there,” explains Luzius Zöller. Due to the abundance of information, one must therefore be careful where it comes from and what interests the disseminator might pursue.
“It is local newspapers that can significantly influence political opinion in a district and provide information,” replied Zöller when asked why they decided to include Main-Post in their project.
Every month a different person participating in the project takes over the social media account of the “news4you” site and uses it to discuss articles and articles that they have selected themselves on a daily basis. Readers and followers are invited to a discussion in text, image and video contributions. One participant in the project is Annika Hagge. For a month she compared the Main-Post with the national right-wing conservative newspaper “Junge Freiheit”.
“In comparison, the Main-Post made a positive impression, as the articles were often very neutral and tried to reflect as different opinions as possible,” sums up Annika Hagge. “With the Junge Freiheit articles, I often found it difficult to determine what kind of contribution they were.” Many articles seem manipulative, and the line between opinion and neutral report is often too blurred. Hagge thinks it’s important to consume different formats and newspapers in order to get multiple points of view and get out of your own news bubble.
Philo Holland also believes that one-sided news bubbles are a big problem. He is studying law in his eighth semester at the University of Würzburg and spent a month taking a closer look at the YouTube channel “Die Da Oben”. The channel deals with federal political issues in its videos. Holland partially criticizes their design and language. “In comparison, I consider the Main-Post newspaper articles to be more neutral and distant and feel that I am in better hands with them,” he explains.
“The project has shown me the value of local journalism once again.”
Philo Holland, project participant of news4you–
“The project has shown me the value of local journalism once again,” affirmed Holland. He is also familiar with the problem of message bubbles. Many today would only look for formats that only confirm the existing opinion and engage in clientele journalism, says Philo. Local journalism makes a neutral contribution to the free formation of opinion.
By young people, for young people
“If young people want to change something in politics, they can only do it locally, and for that we have to know the local conditions,” says Pia Beckmann, initiator of the project. She is pleased that it has been possible to create a financially and thematically independent offer: “By young people for young people.” Beckmann only wants one thing for the future: “We want to reach even more people and invite followers to more discourses on our Instagram account.”
The news4you project
You can find the online presence of the news4you project at: www.instagram.com/_pics4peace_/
If you want to donate to the project, you can transfer to the following account:
Account holder: City of Würzburg
Sparkasse Mainfranken Würzburg
IBAN DE92 7905 0000 0042 0000 67
BIC BYLADEM1SWU
Password: donation
Source: dink
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