Google News Initiative, in partnership with DataLeads and Internews, held a day-long workshop titled ‘PollCheck: Covering India’s Election’ at Grand Bhabendra Alay Hotel hall in Guwahati on Saturday.
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The workshop was held in a bid to enlighten the journalists, media researchers, journalism students on fact-checking to ultimately identify fake photos, videos and other contents spreading misinformation and fake news in social media and news specifically ahead of the Lok Sabha Election 2019 round the corner.
In the workshop, Google-certified trainers imparted the participants through different tools and strategies to identify fake news and debunk it.
The main topics covered were tools of online verification and fact-checking, journalist digital safety and security, YouTube for elections coverage and data visualization for elections.
The event participated by more than 40 participants included senior journalists, editors, photojournalists, media researchers and journalism students from Cotton University, Guwahati University, Assam Don Bosco University, Royal Global University among others.
“It is a part of pan-India initiative of Google News Initiative Training Network to support quality journalism and to curb the spread of disinformation and fake news in the country,” a trainer said.
It is pertinent here to mention that the Google News Initiative is hosting training sessions in 30 cities between February 26 – April 6, 2019, across the country in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Bangla, Kannada, Gujarati, Odiya, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi.