The Euro – Atlantic Council of North Macedonia in partnership with the Atlantic Club of Bulgaria, supported by the U.S. Department of State is part of a project entitled “Generation Z: Building up disinformation resilience.”

This joint research effort focuses on finding out what political content memes bring and what are the propaganda techniques used in the fun pictures that each of us sees on social media. During the first phase of this project, a research of more than 1000 memes on political, economic and social topics spread in Bulgaria and North Macedonia was conducted.

The study is led by Dr. Preslav Nakov Senior Research Associate I degree at Qatar Institute of Computer Studies and Doctor of Computer Science from California University of Berkeley, USA.

In the second part of the Generation Z project, a 3-day training course for media literacy and fighting fake news will be organized in Skopje for students and young professionals - journalists, employees in non-governmental organizations and institutions.
This training will use a methodology that meets the needs of the participants and reflects the rapidly changing environment.
Activities will include presentations, lectures, analytical and practical seminars, workshops, interactive debates, teamwork and team-building exercises.

The project will involve 30 students and young professionals from North Macedonia and Bulgaria who will:

- Achieve media literacy skills in order to identify false information on social media;

- Become able to build skills for using various tools for analysis of media content on political, economic and social topics in order to become active citizens in the digital world;

- Study the use of memes on social media for disinformation purposes;

- Learn more about media environment and freedom of expression in Bulgaria and North Macedonia.