BECID Team’s Achievements: February 2025 in Review
BECID
March 1, 2025 ·
Here you will find a comprehensive review of the BECID team’s achievements in February 2025. This overview includes events organized and attended by the team. You will also find our team members’ latest publications and media coverage.
BECID organises
On February 1, young participants from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania collaborated in mixed teams to develop well-researched and impactful media content strategies on key topics, including the environment, health, culture and entertainment, social issues, and politics. The Baltic Youth Mediathon in Riga concluded with a victory for a team that exposed cryptocurrency schemes in the economics category. Read more here.
The “Delfi Melo detektorius Increasing Content Visibility for Youth Audience” project kicked off at the end of 2024 with funding from the US-based Poynter Institute. A team is on a mission to fight misinformation among young people under 35 by creating engaging Reels-style videos that enhance media literacy. Delfi’s YouTube Shorts have been already been complimented by YouTube staff for their eye-catching editing and strong audience appeal.
Safer Internet Day 2025 took place on February 11. Our MIL team from UT, in collaboration with the Estonian Union for Child Welfare, compiled a resource titled “Becoming a More Aware Internet User Through Cooperation“, aimed at teachers. The collection provides information on popular apps among children; discussion topics to help children and young people make more informed choices in the digital world; games, exercises, videos, and more to facilitate discussions. A webinar titled “Help, My Child Created a Social Media Account” was also held, featuring Inger Klesment (UT) as a participant.
Publications and media
Aistė Meidutė, an editor and senior fact-checker at Delfi LT’s fact-checking initiative Melo detektorius, conducted a retrospective analysis of Russia’s and China’s cultural influence on the Lithuanian population. The project, Propaganda Through Art, aimed to enhance Delfi readers’ cultural literacy, strengthen their ability to make well-informed media choices, and foster public discourse on the role of soft power in shaping society.
A collective monography “Artimas tolimas medijų pasaulis: virsmai, ribos ir būdai tai suprasti” about media literacy compiled by Auksė Balčytienė (VMU) was published. On February 28, the book was introduced to a wider audience at the 25th Vilnius Book Fair.
“Kremlin Propaganda Revives as ‘Neutral’ YouTube Channels Amid Claims of Baltic Migration” was published by Inga Spriņģe (Re:Baltica).
We published a new report “Activities to Increase Information Resilience Among Russian-speaking Baltic Residents”.
BECID is represented
On February 3, Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) gave a lecture “How do politicians influence us on social media?” to high school students visiting the University of Tartu.
On February 14, Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) took over unitartuscience’s Instagram account and shared how her day looks like. You can look at her stories here.
On February 25, Maria Murumaa-Mengel and Inger Klesment (UT) conducted trainings on AI and desfinformation at Kohtla-Järve Gymnasium.
On February 26, Inger Klesment (UT) talked about developing kindergarten children’s digital skill through games at a conference aimed at teachers.
Varia
Delfi LT recently partnered up with academics from Vytautas Magnus University to create a database of dis- and misinformation claims that will be used to train AI models for fast disinformation detection in the Lithuanian language. The aim is to close the gap in AI tools that are accessible to fact checkers who work with small languages’ disinformation detection.
