Dozens of schools, institutions and organisations in Bulgaria celebrated the 18th Safer Internet Day on 9 February with various events and initiatives.
The central national event was organized by the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre (SIC) and held online with the active participation of their Youth panel. Around 80 young people, teachers and professionals took part in the event which was also streamed live on the Facebook page of the SIC. A dozen of schools gathered their pupils and followed the live event on a screen.
At the start the winning 3 cyberscouts squads were announced – they were the most active groups of 12-years old pupils who passed a training under the Cyberscout Programme of the SIC and organized number of events and initiatives to transfer their knowledge and skills to their peers.
The central part of the event was dedicated to the false information in internet and the risks it poses to uninformed users. Members of the Youth panel chose the topic, prepared and demonstrated short role-playing debates on the most popular false information concerning the Covid pandemic. After the debates all participants discussed the dangers of fake news, the ways they get viral and how they could be stopped, minimized and debunked.
The video streaming on Facebook reached more than 11,000 viewers who also commented and discussed. The video continues to be the most popular post on the SIC webpages and the number of people reached surpassed 20,000. It was also uploaded in the SIC YouTube channel.
SID gave start to the traditional campaign Media Literacy Days that will run in the following 2 months. The campaign is organized by the Coalition for media literacy in schools that was co-founded by the SIC and united more than 20 organisations and experts. They plan dozens of events and initiatives to attract the attention to the need of digital and media literacy as the best way to fight fake news and manipulated information online.
