by Bérénice Vanneste, Média Animation asbl, Belgium.
With the TADAM project -Tools & Awareness about Disinformation, Algorithms and Media – nine European partners have come together to raise awareness of the impact of AI and algorithms in the media. The project aims to bring together the sectors of media education, research, media industry, teaching… and anyone else interested in exchanging best practices and designing educational resources about the impacts of artificial intelligence and algorithms in the media.
Key Themes and Research Areas
The TADAM project is taking place in several stages. Firstly, a major cross-perspective seminar was held in June 2024 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and gathered more than 50 persons in person and 100 online. Four main themes were discussed during the seminar: AI Literacy, Explainability & Public Understanding; Social Use & Impact of AI; Impact of AI on journalism, work and employment; AI, Political Manipulation & Bias.
From these discussions, five strategic areas of work were defined to guide the project’s next phases:
1. Reflecting on AI’s Positive and Negative Roles in Media Production: Analysing both opportunities and challenges posed by AI in content creation.
2. Addressing AI-Generated Biases and Ethical/Deontological Implications in Media Reception: Tackling issues related to bias, ethics, and deontology in AI-generated media content.
3. Developing Skills as a Critical AI Prompter: Equipping stakeholders with the skills to critically engage with AI in both media production and reception.
4. Evaluating Audience Perception, Awareness, and Emotions Regarding AI Outputs: Understanding how audiences perceive and emotionally react to AI-generated content.
5. Creative Prompting and AI Training: Creativity in the Age of AI.
Workshops Across Europe
From July 2024 to February 2025, a decentralised phase led to the organisation of 15 workshops in Belgium, France, Italy, Greece, Finland, Sweden, Macedonia, Montenegro and Romania. Through these workshops, the consortium collected best practices, local resources and innovative ideas that can respond to the challenges posed by the use of AI and algorithms in the information process, including disinformation. By crossing target groups – about 300 people so far – like educators, teachers, media professionals or even IT developers, the TADAM project aims to obtain the most comprehensive possible overview of the challenges of AI on the production and reception of information at the European level.
Upcoming Online Webinars in spring 2025
From these workshops, a number of new questions and areas for reflection were put forward. They will be discussed during forthcoming online webinars in spring 2025.
- Webinar n°1 – April 2025: How people engage with AI in their everyday lives? Focusing on the shift from merely trusting AI’s output to understanding its production process. Through real-life stories, shared insights, and collaborative discussion, the session will aim to uncover how this shift influences trust—whether in technology, the creators behind it, or ourselves.
- Webinar n°2: How important are language, literacy and descriptive skills for multimodal AI? This webinar will help participants to craft clearer prompts and more effective interactions with AI.
- Webinar n°3: How does AI portray the world? How AI is trained and who is behind? How does AI in some ways amplify stereotypes? After short presentations, participants will be invited to debate on bias, databases, economical system behind and potential political influence.
- Webinar n°4: Exploration of generative AI’s ethical and creative implications through design fiction. Participants will be immersed in a fictitious tribunal to explore risks and opportunities of generative AI in media. A specific methodology will assign roles to participants to immerse themselves in the debate and examine all the arguments for and against AI.
- Webinar n°5: A final session to wrap up negative and positive challenges as discussed and debated during all the online meetings.
The programme and all details of these online webinars will soon be available here and also in the project’s collaborative workspace. Open to everyone interested, the aim is to create a community, exchange good ideas, pool resources and work together all over Europe.
A Grand Finale: The Media Edukathon in Athens, September 2025
On 3-5 September 2025, the project will culminate in a transnational event in Athens, Greece: a a creative Media Edukathon. This major training event will be dedicated to educators, teachers, journalism trainers, etc. wishing to co-design inspiring activities and the outlines of future educational resources to address the pre-identified issues. Don’t hesitate to show an interest in this event and to join us if the objective seems relevant to your own experience or needs! Stay tuned. All information regarding the project are available from our website.
TADAM is co-financed by the Creative Europe programme and coordinated by Media Animation (Belgium) in partnership with UCLouvain (Belgium), University of Florence (Italy), Tampere University (Finland), Karpos (Greece), University Paul Valery Montpellier (France), Institute of Communication Studies of Skopje (Macedonia), the International Federation of Journalists and the International Association for Media Education (IAME).
Author
Bérénice Vanneste,
European project manager at Média Animation asbl (Belgium), coordinator of TADAM project
