BECID Team’s Achievements: March 2025 in Review
BECID
April 1, 2025 ·
Here you will find a comprehensive review of the BECID team’s achievements in March 2025. This overview includes events organized and attended by the team. You will also find our team members’ latest publications and media coverage.
Publications and media
In September, Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences produced and published a TV programme on disinformation and fact-checking. The programme is in Latvian, but now it has subtitles in English. Guests of the programme are professor Jānis Buholcs, leading researcher at Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, and Evita Puriņa, editor of Re:Baltica’s “Re:Check” section.
Podcast Dialoogia has got two new episodes. In the first episode, Maria Murumaa-Mengel and Gretel Juhansoo (UT) spoke with Lāsma Šķestere who is a lecturer and researcher at Rīga Stradiņš University, on her way to a PhD. In the second episode, Maria invited over his son Iko with whom they talked about children’s internet usage
Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) shared her thoughts on the importance of media literacy among elective subjects in Õpetajate Leht.
Maria Murumaa-Mengel and Inger Klesment (UT) introduced the slang dictionary in Tartu Postimees. Inger talked about the same topic on radio Kuku.
Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) spoke on Vikerraadio about TikTokers who break social norms.
Maria Murumaa-Mengel was a guest on the podcast Euractiv’s Truth Talks. Summary of the discussion and a written overview of information disorders in Estonia can be found here.
We published a new report Co-created Baltic Youth MIL Hackathon Series.
BECID is represented
On March 4 and 20, Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) trained the University of Tartu’s communication staff on social media communication.
On March 6, Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) gave a lecture on developing media literacy in Estonia at the international conference Media Literacy in Journalism Education: Ukrainian and International Practices.
On March 7, Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) trained the University of Tartu’s leaders in the workshop Sexual Harassment at the University on the topic of technology-mediated violence and harassment.
On March 11, Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) participated in the media-themed panel discussion at the Praxis conference Jüri juhib, Mari rühib?. Watch the recording here.
On March 13, Maria Murumaa-Mengel (UT) gave a guest lecture titled Tackling Disinformation – Estonian Experiences to journalism and communication students at Kharkiv University.
On March 20, Gretel Juhansoo (UT) and Oksana Belova-Dalto conducted a webinar How to detect conspiracy theories in crisis?.
On March 25, Maia Klaassen (UT) gave a presentation titled Resilience and Resistance in the Age of Information Disorders and participated in a panel discussion at the SSCW conference-hackathon Youth, Civil Society Organizations, and Educators Leading the Way – Shaping Media and Information Literacy and the New Digital Frontiers of Information.
On March 25–26, fact checkers Aistė Meidutė and Monika Jakimčukė (Delfi LT) attended the joint conference Democracy Matters – Facts Matter, organized by the EFCSN, EDMO, and the European Parliament, in Brussels.
On March 28, Maia Klaassen (UT) took part in a panel discussion at the Social Sciences Institute’s employer fair on the topic Is AI a Partner or a Competitor? How to Prepare for the Future?
Varia
DELFI Lithuania is proud to have contributed to the creation of a database of climate change-related facts. This project involves 25 fact-checking organizations from 15 European countries, which together fight against the spread of false or misleading narratives. To do this as effectively as possible, fact-checking organizations, universities and technology companies have joined forces – they are working together on the FactCRISIS project. Read more about EuroClimateCheck here.
