How to stop disinformation: lessons from Ukraine for the wider world
Date and time:
Thursday 30 June, 2016
19:00 - 20:30
Location:
Ukrainian Institute London
79 Holland Park
London
W11 3SW
Ukraine has been experiencing an unprecedented onslaught of disinformation in the course of a hybrid attack from Russia since 2014. From its initially very vulnerable situation, it managed to build up defences against it: it constructed its own narrative, reformed its national broadcaster, started producing more of its own television content and pushed a number of civil society initiatives, which made the Ukrainian media space healthier and more competitive.
What are the lessons the rest of the world could learn from Ukraine’s experience? How to break the information blockade in the areas of Donbas controlled by Russian-backed rebels? What takeaways are there for policy-makers in the field of media and communications?
A presentation by Peter Pomerantsev and Marina Pesenti, moderated by Anna Reid.
This event will be held in English.
FREE
Speaker
Peter Pomerantsev
Peter Pomerantsev leads the Beyond Propaganda programme at the Legatum Institute’s Transitions Forum. He is an author and documentary producer. His writing features regularly in the London Review of Books, Atlantic, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere, focusing largely, though not exclusively, on 21st-century propaganda. Previously, Pomerantsev worked as a consultant on EU and World Bank development projects in the former USSR. His book about working as a TV producer in Putin’s Russia, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, was published by Faber in 2015.
Speaker
Marina Pesenti
Marina Pesenti spent 10 years with the BBC World Service in London, producing and presenting programmes. She was a winner of the BBC WS Documentary Bursary Award and produced documentaries for the English and Ukrainian desks. Marina is Director of the Ukrainian Institute London which promotes the country’s language and culture and encourages public debate around Ukraine-related issues. Marina gives regular interviews to the UK media. Her writing has featured in OpenDemocracy and Ukrainian Novoye Vremya.
Moderator
Anna Reid
Anna Reid is a writer and journalist. She worked as The Economist's Kyiv correspondent in the early '90s, headed the foreign policy programme of the think tank Policy Exchange from 2002-6, and has written three books of Russian and Ukrainian history. An extended edition of her first, Borderland: a Journey through the History of Ukraine, was published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson in 2015. Her other books are The Shaman's Coat: a Native History of Siberia, also published by Weidenfeld, and Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44, published by Bloomsbury.
