M-r Vladimir Gjorgjevski is the Head of Local Branch Office of RYCO in North Macedonia. He has managed various projects supported by Youth in Action; Erasmus+; Pestalozzi Foundation; UNDP; UNEP; USAID, etc. Worked on topics such as youth and youth workers, (social) entrepreneurship, conflict transformation, countering hate speech, migration, etc.
-We are living in the 21st where information is going so fast, and information is power. But information is very easily manipulated, people are manipulating that information, said Vladimir Gjorgjevksi on the Regional Conference “Attacks on democracy and human rights”, held on 28 of july, 2021.
“That is why I personally believe that we need more regulations, state regulation, but also maybe regional and European regulation, because we can see what politicians are doing if we go analyse Hungary, Turkey… and here what was happening previously with how many journalists ended up in prisons and many people because they were talking against some politicians, or they were true facts. But nowadays also we have to see journalists in the media, media platforms, we have to also analyse, people have to be generally more critical, to analyse the structure, who is owning that media, why are they having this media, are they really earning from the media, from them or do they have several companies behind, so why are they saying what they are saying? And generally in Western Balkans divided society, media are influencing a lot, unfortunately more in dividing people than uniting people. And we have to teach, especially starting from youth, people to think analytically and critically, and between the lines to see what the media is trying to say.
We have a lot of cases, unfortunately it’s not just Mersiha, most of us have been on the media by like trying to attack us with fake news or lies. In that sense RYCO has started to work on this topic. We had more than 50 stories created by young journalists from their reality. We had, for example, students writing about how life is in dormitories, or how COVID influences the online education, how it is in that way, but generally we need more and more stories that unite us in the media than divide us. And especially the power of not just formal education, but also non-formal, informal education. We have to really focus there, because RYCO Is giving some projects on media education.” Pointed Gjorgjevski.
Gjorgjevski referred to the lack of educational narrative on media and the influence of various factors as social media, politicians and other groups.
“There is one training that is dealing with that, but that is just the start, we need more funds, we need more focus. And if we look at our media, if you look at how many movie series we have, I remember when I was a teenager, it was movies that were really educating us, there were more like educational stories than now. Now it’s the narratives and they are creating big narratives there that we need to focus on more and more. And we have to work with several groups, like sport fans, like religious leaders, social media influencers, political leaders, to educate them how to use the media properly, because if we don’t, if we just use it to manipulate each other, then we will just be in the same place, or go back and we will have more and more youth migration.”
Natasha Cvetkovska
Camera: Dehran Muratov
Video editing: Arian Mehmeti
Photography: Ognen Boshnjakovski
