What’s the project about?

The „Promoting human rights in the digital era“ project lasted two years. The project kicked off with a consortium of organisations carrying out research involving more than six hundred people working in the Czech media. As a result, a course on digital rights was implemented in the Charles University Faculty of Social Sciences (Journalism), and a handbook for journalists about digital rights was created. The project activities are now rounded off with a series of educational videos.

What do the videos say?

The cross-cutting theme of the series is digital exclusion. In a separate video, Jan Vobořil from IuRe explains the current situation in the Czech Republic, where some groups are increasingly excluded from society thanks to advancing digitalisation. In addition, sociologist Petr Lupač explains that this is not just a Czech phenomenon. According to him, the digital divide is constantly renewing itself, which is also evident in AI, which is creating yet another level of digital divide.

Two videos from the series look at how AI will affect the Czech media. It becomes clear that some are hesitant about whether news content should be recommended automatically, while others believe that AI will increase the demand for texts from verified authors.

The digital exclusion also relates to how the media and digital technologies account for the needs of people with disabilities. For example, in one of the videos, Petr Vysuček from Deaf Friendly points out that it was only thanks to the pandemic that Czech Television’s main news programme started to be interpreted into sign language. Furthermore, we also see that many websites of national authorities and institutions are simply inaccessible to people with disabilities.

There are also two videos dedicated to cybersecurity. In addition to the video by Tom Fredrik Blenning from EFN explaining in several cases why it is important for journalists to take care of their privacy, in the second video journalist Jan Cibulka gives concrete instructions on how to do this.

“I understand that it’s convenient to have 10 years of photos, messages and everything else on your phone. But given how vulnerable these devices are, it’s essential to limit that information,” he says.

In the final video, AI expert Alžbeta Solarczyk Kraus explains how ubiquitous personalisation, using our personal data to work, influences our media consumption.

The video series is suitable for anyone to watch, with or without prior knowledge of the topics. You can watch them now with subtitles in English here.

Contribution by: Hynek Trojánek, PR coordinator, Iuridicum Remedium