“The whole point of fake news is to decrease trust in real news. About gender issues, migration, the pandemic, the vaccines and their effectiveness. When democracies use their own legal tools to limit freedom of expression”, said Abit Hoxha from University of Agder in Norway, at Conference: Attacks on democracy and human rights: Civil society organizations in support of Western Balkans societies facing disinformation, hate speech and hybrid attacks, organized by CIVIL in cooperation with Balkan Forum and members of the Civil Society Platform for Democracy and Human Rights (CSP).
“The other thing I wanted to say, from the Kosovar perspective, we have to look at countries from a comprehensive perspective. The quality of democracy depends entirely on the quality of journalism. Your democracy is only as good as the freedom of the press. To fix these problems through a comprehensive approach, we have to rethink reforms in education, especially in the field of media literacy and understand that political participation is an obligation to a functioning democracy.”, said Hoxha.
He mentioned that We have to think about the tools through which we measure trust in media and political systems to cultivate our democracy.
“I would like to add that your democracy is as good as your political participation. Freedoms don’t come as a god-given or nature-given right, but as a responsibility Freedoms do not come as a God-given right, but as a responsibility to be nurtured.”, noted Abit Hoxha on Wednesday (7.28.2021), Skopje.
