REGISTRATION OPEN: Conference: Depolarisation: Road to Deeper Trust

The aim of the conference is to explore what tools and methods we as civic actors can use which can help us to build deeper trust among people hence depolarize divided societies in challenging political situations. We will also look into trust in the times of Corona. How can the civil society respond to the new situation and how can it mitigate polarisation? We will also explore other tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data or augmented reality and their role in tackling polarisation. For more details and the complete program click on the conference website.

**We invite you to 5th International Conference „Civic Actors in Conflicts“

DEPOLARISATION: ROAD TO DEEPER TRUST**

September 29 - October 1, 2020 Online / Bratislava, Slovakia

As part of our program we have prepared:

8 interactive online workshops

3 panel discussions

3 parallel face to face workshops and one World Café

1 Stand up comedy

MEET THE PEOPLE Photo: https://rsf.org/

Jessikka Aro /FIN/ Panel discussion: Media, trust and polarisation

Jessikka Aro is a Finnish journalist working for Finland’s public service broadcaster Yle. In September 2014, she began to investigate pro-Russian Internet trolls, but became a victim of their activities herself. In 2019 she was notified that she was to receive an International Women of Courage Award but this was mysteriously rescinded just before the ceremony. Together with Jędrzej Malko, coordinator of Projekt Spięcie, a project aimed at fighting filter bubbles in Poland, they will share their experience on the role of media in depolarised societies and building trust.

Özlem Cekic/DEN/ Panel discussion: Radical Trust An inspiring speaker and author using her own experience as a politician, political debater and former nurse. As a Danish Muslim member of the Parliament she used to receive hate emails and she decided to visit the very people, who sent her the messages, in their homes. What has happened surprised her. She will share her stories in this panel together with a Slovak journalist and author Iva Mrvová, who traveled the middle East and often relied on the help of strangers of different faith and gender. Getting out of your comfort zone to meet someone whom you may fear or hate is certainly not easy, but some people did it. Is this level of radical trust necessary in order to rebuild trust among people in our societies or is this exceptional work of people with strong internal motivations that are out of ordinary?

Guy De Pauw is a language engineer, developing Artificial Intelligence technology for the automated processing of user-generated content. He is the CEO of the University of Antwerp spin-off Textgain®, a company that leverages such AI technology for societal good. With a background in linguistics and machine learning, he is continuously exploring how self-learning technology can find meaningful patterns in massive content streams and how these patterns can be transformed into actionable insights. Together with his colleague, they will provoke our thinking in an online workshop Without data you're just a person with an opinion.

AND MANY MORE!Check out here: https://www.pdcs-conference.sk/

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Partners for Democratic Change Slovakia (PDCS) is organizing for the fifth time an international conference of “Civic Actors in Conflict”.

This time it is a concluding event of an international Project Grey that brought together data analysts and machine learning specialists, social workers, experts on de-polarisation and storytellers. Project Grey uses these technologies to tackle online polarization, one of the biggest social issues of our time. Through our new tool and dashboard, we gain insight in radical comments and so called ‘echo chambers’, online environments in which you basically only encounter resonance of your own perspective. We use the dashboard as a dissemination tool for the Project Grey social media campaign. We have also trained social workers to use the dashboard to track what happens on social media in the area of their work. The project is funded by the European Union (Internal Security Fund – Police).