The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: Welcome to this panel. My name is Sølve Karlsen. I'm head of education and media literacy attain which is the media literacy department, Tenk. I'm together here with two of my colleagues to other projects. We're going to present for you how we work in Norway to include youth into public discourse.
First of all, it is important for me to say this is no silver bullet. It is corporations together with different initiatives and these are some of the examples, we will bring forward to you. Faktisk was a fact‑checking organization established in Norway in 2027 ‑‑ 2017.
Shortly after that, we saw there was a huge need in school to have media literacy and those working with fact checking with journalist. We saw the need to being more connected in tools. All that works in Tenk, which is the department I'm head of, are teachers. We know how to talk to kids and young people. We see the need of connecting media outlets and media information to the classroom as well. We started in 2019 with Tenk, developing learning resource and connected to the curriculum in Norway. We are really closely connected to news studies as published all day. We know that from ‑‑ my age ‑‑ we started with this editorial media which was usually. But we see more and more today, that we have those social media and the information is coming rapidly to young people. Often, it is really short. It is maybe not that balanced as media could be.
The challenge is to show young people when you are TikTok or other social media, you need to know the rules what is happening there.
>> It is about the small.
>> What is this? Huh?
>> We look at the video again.
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: So in three seconds, your attention should be caught. Then in 30 seconds, everything should be explained. That can be hard. Often young people have the challenge to see the nuances in there and trying to find the differences between it. Sometimes it could also be the way they believe, okay, I know everything. We also see there's a lot of young people have a hard time finding the source of the information. Many times it could be the way they just don't know they've been watching news or watching information. We also see on other social media, for example, Snapchat here different sources are connected. Then you ended up and you don't know what kind of sources you are using and you can't tell the difference from them. You might have some sources that could be reliability and other sources that might have an interest behind the information. What we saw in Norway, what is happening more and more is that young people, they are using social media.
This graph shows how and what kind of social media they were using. The feed is getting more and more visual. It is not text the way it used to be. That way it is not that easy to fact check it. Often it is not right and wrong, but more you need to know the narrative behind it. Often what we see is a lot of young people also get their news from social media as well.
So in that way, we have to understand that we cannot go with pointing finger and tell young people you need to stay away from social media. We need to educate them so they understand the rules where they are meeting the information. This is an example. Just before the war started in the Middle East after the 7th of October attacks. We saw a lot of videos sharing this saying the war has started. Israel has invaded Gaza. This was videos that was shared online. It was actually a couple of years ago. But in social media, you don't see this. For a lot of people that sharing this, they don't know this is old videos. In this way, you need to talk with young people and tell them, okay, where do you get your information from? Also when you are talking about social media, you need to understand there are different accounts that you have to check. Then you can tell what kind of information it is and if it is reliability.
We know that feelings are really strong in the news landscape that we see today. This was one of the first photos that was published in Norway after that Russian invasion in 2022. It was this lady who stands in front of her house telling that Russia has bombed her. Soon after this poster was posted on X asking could this be really true? This woman was bombed back in 2018 as well. It was really strange. She was a drama teacher. Someone says maybe she's an influencer. This way of making questions towards news and information is really effective. It can be hard for young people to understand if this is true or not.
Then you end up that nothing can be true. Then you are really vulnerable for misinformation. It is not only war that can be challenged. This one is a video from the MET Gala last year showing what is going on in New York where all of the celebrities were gathered to show some trends.
>> Moments from the 2024 MET Gala. The challengers first in the corporate in the black‑and‑blue striped gown. The look nailed it with the grapes, feathered, and hum hummingbird accent.
>> The front of the dress. Check it out.
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: Besides it is really clear she might have some back problems. You can see it all. You can see what it looks like. You can see the pictures showing Selena Gomez wearing this dress or Rihanna this one. Although in Norway, if she goes out in the dress, she will get far away and up in the ocean. Anyway, the dress also totally made the carpet as well. None of them were at MET Gala. These are all picturing created by AI. Young people don't understand this. We know among young people and on social media, clicks and sharings are money.
We have to remember this one. Often we forget that we need also to address the challenges young people need. Not only 45 wide men.
This video was shared. This was before they have shared what kind of support they have and political pons in the U.S. It was also edited by AI. Young people don't know how to do this. We need to show them the tools. How can we verify pictures and videos when we don't know if it is true or not. That's why we are traveling around to schools in Norway, sharing lesson plans online, and learning them how to do a reverse image search. This is easy to do. If you haven't heard of it, you can do it. This way you can maneuver the information landscape and find the correct video and know the context it is made in. Then you know how to get the correct information.
Because a vital part of having free speech is getting the correct information. If you should get the correct information, you need to have the tools. Then you can find that this is the original video. How it was made. She didn't have a Trump banner at all.
But when we're talking about AI, it is not only the pictures and the video. It is also the AI bots. For young people, we know it is easy to open yourself to a bot. That's not a person that makes you embarrassed. The problem is who is listening on the other side. Even though you know they are AI, you kind of forget that. When all of your friends on Snapchat has gone to bed and you are sharing all of your inner thoughts, that will be shared and remembered forever. What will happen the next time you have troubles and someone wants to make must be on your feelings.
What we do at Tenk is make plans that's answering to the news as it happens. After the war started in 2022, we were with lesson plans three days after the invasion. We also address trends on social media, what I eat in a day. We created lessons plans to those as well. Those trends might be challenges for young people when they don't what is behind the trend and how does it work? We also need to build knowledge abou00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000+9
3333gft45redxt, for example, AI. This is a package where they learn young people and how they can and what is behind AI. There's a lot of young people in Norway that are using AI for school work, for different tasks. They are doing in the everyday life. But what's behind and how it works. They don't know. Because we haven't created stuff yet. We say, okay, when everything is done, we'll create something. We need to create stuff that might lose the date sooner or later. We need to go out there and show them the AI pictures and AI movies and so on. We also work with librarians as well. This is the quest for the truth it is called. It is traveling around to librarians in Norway. We at Tenk can change the examples on those screens. All the time, this is an updated exhibition that librarians can invite young people to the library and show, okay, here you can learn the last news. Here you can learn some new techniques. Those stations have reverse image search how to spot AI, how to understand algorithms, and so on. Because we have to remember there's only ‑‑ we can't be the only one who is sharing this information. We need to build an alliance together with others. Like librarians, like social workers, teachers and so on. All the time we are sharing. Also we are cooperations with different other projects in the media.
Here is a workshop with the teachers at the school in Norway. All the time we are publishing lesson plans on our web site, Tenk.Faktisk.no. Are having visitors from schools and teachers in Oslo. We have the TikTok account. We share the knowledge. Young people can reach us straight through the social media.
Because there needs to be adults in the room. We know by research that young people wants adults to be with them. Not as a surveillance, but a talking partner. You don't need to be a cool TikTok teacher. You need to open the conversation and share your knowledge to meet the young ones. We have to remember if there's a home alone party, everyone knows how to looks like when we come home.
>> KATIRINA: My name is Katharina. I used to be an influencer. I posted in TikTok, fun fact videos in Norwegian every single week. I spent a lot of time to work out the content to maximize my like, views, and shares. Today I am a journalist. I work in the NNB. I work in the news department and I may explain the videos for young adults. In my current role, I often reflect on how I shaped my content to fix the algorithm when I was an influencer. When we talk about social media today, we quickly arrive at topic of polarization. Extreme views get the most engagement on social media, creating the shockers or entertainers or scarers or surprisers. They get the most views. Maybe that's because the algorithms that are designed to give the users what they want actually end up making creators more extreme in the presentation or in the views or in the way they express themselves or even in the beliefs. When I was making content on TikTok, I quickly realised I had to amplify my facial expression. I got more views when I presented in a shocking way or more sensational that I would normally do. My online persona become the character in the TikTok matrix. It was still me. It was an amplified version of me. Why did that happen? Because it worked. It got me likes, engage the, and followers. People wanted the larger‑than‑life storytelling and interesting content. I continued to shape my content to fit the algorithm. In that way, the algorithm shaped me. Parts of my personality were still in the content. It was an enhanced part. I didn't realise that was what was happening when I was making content. On social media now, this type of content isn't necessarily the type that would be doing well. Now the trends are more authentic, rather than the larger than life content that worked a few years ago. That's the thing. The trends they change really quickly. So do the content creators. They are very, very good at adapting their content. It might not be like this for every content creator. Getting thousands of likes and comments and new followers every week become addicting. Opening my mobile phone and having thousands of people praise me, it definitely stimulated some sort of reward center in my brain. When that's taken away and you get less likes, it is disappointing. Might be stressful. Adding the layer of earning the money on all of this as well. It is really easy to start chasing the likes. Then it is really easy to start adapting your content to whatever works. That is an addiction. How does this attention addiction affect how content creators make their content?
Maybe the hunt for online recognition isn't that harmful. Maybe it just makes the content more energetic or colourful or creative. Maybe it is not a problem that I change the tone of my work voice or that I exaggerated my facial expressions. Maybe it is not a problem that I added elements of surprise or humor or did everything that I could to get my message across in a way that stimulated the algorithm. What if the algorithms push people to exaggerate their political reviews or their personal beliefs or their religious thoughts? What if you gain more followers by provoking a little? Or by being controversial? What if the content common section explodes every time you offend someone? What if altering your own view give you more leagues or lying gives you attention?
How does it change us? What happens to public discourse when we have this reward system? We might get influenced by more extreme views and we might get the impression that these views are the norm. The middle ground shrinks and we might feel like we disagree with people much more than in reality do.
We all have our own feeds and our own individual understanding of what is going on. And our world views are in many ways shaped by what the algorithm chooses to show us on the platforms. And by who we choose to trust. Unlike media where editors hopefully try to be balanced with what they present, the algorithm on social media are tune to give us of what we already like. If I like football content, I might have a lot of football content in my feed. If I like Andrew, I might get a lot of content of him. I would not get exposed to the viewpoint or other side of the story. That leads to echo chambers where the viewpoints become more extreme. As an influencer, I experienced how easy it is to gain people's trust online. I was in 20‑something‑year‑old living in an apartment, no academic background, but I was making fact videos and people trusted me. People followed me. They become attached to me and my TikTok persona. Nobody was fact checking what I was doing. Most of my followers were young. I had thousands of comments and hundreds of thousands of likes. I had many more teens viewing my content than the big Norwegian news outlets had at the time. What I said as a private person was often just accepted as the truth. That's a huge responsibility for one individual. That's a responsibility that many con opportunity creators carry. What happens to democracy when they influence people listen to politicians?
Who do we trust? How do we shape our ability to think actively during the crisis? We can't rely on people getting important information from influencers who rely on their content being spread by big private tech companies. We just don't know enough about how these algorithms work. We might not notice algorithms change. It might feel like the content is organic. It is not. It is owned and it is controlled by big private tech companies. We noticed the changes when Twitter become X and Elon Musk made some drastic alterations. What if similar shifts happened gradually and over time on other platforms. How will we notice we are being shaped by the content? How would we notice that when we are all already viewing the different content? I ultimately made the conscious decision to leave the influencer world and to join a national news broadcaster as I was and I still am concerned about what happens if trust in media declines that is editor led. We tried to find ways to meet young people's needs online.
They want a lot of the same as adults do. They want to know about wars and politics. They want it delivered in a different way. They want it rob different platforms. My job in the journalism arena is to make videos for young adults. Our target audience is people between the ages of 17 and 30. My and my colleague, Ula, we made videos every week planning various topics in the news. Gaza, taxes, elections, and also about dates and plastic surgery and other things trending.
When get the video out in hours. We want to make it easier to understand and be constructive and give them context. We want to make it easier for them to follow the rest of the news. I call them NO. We film them and public them on TV, raid, and social media. When we lib the videos, the main goal is to let the target audience know when that we exist. We have to accept it has changed. We need to reach young people with safe and constructive and fact‑based news. And they need to know and understand the difference between an influencer and editor‑led media. That's why we need to have two thoughts in the mind at the same time. Because even though there are good reasons to be aware of the shadow sites, we must not ignore the good sides of social media. People can speak out, build communities, stay connected, they can learn and experience and express themselves in ways that were not possible before. This is especially important for many young people. There's a lot of value in having the opportunity to share your views without having to go through editor‑led media first. For many people, a TikTok video or Snapchat video is their way. TikTok is an important news source for young people.
For many people under 20, it is the most important news source. Where I work now has made the decision to start posting news stories on TikTok again. Even though I've spent most of the time talking about the negative sides of social media, I think that responsible figures posing the news content on social media is the right decision to make when trying to reach the younger audience. TikTok is an open platform in Norway, used by the large number of young adults. Out of the different social media platforms, TikTok is the most important source of news for many young Norwegians. As long as they are on TikTok, we need to inform them and give them content they can trust. We need to show them that we, an editor‑led broadcaster, exists. We need to be aware and skeptical of how the social media algorithms work. That does not mean we must leave the platforms and leave the youth there on their own. We must offer trust, clarity, and context in the chaotic media landscape.
>> ADA BJØRANGER: Hi. I'm da, I'm a journalist which directly translates to FVN Youth. It is in the newspaper in the south of Norway. They started the Young Project. Through this project, all high school students in the area gets ask security councils to the newspaper. They get their own digital subscription. We're three journalist who work in the project full time. And our job mainly consistence of two things. One we may get targeted news or new targeted for young people. We visit the youth and tell them about what a journalist does. This project is a non‑profit and it is funded by local businesses and foundations who also believe that the students should have access to the local news.
Why do we do it? I'm going to talk about how we do it. But I want to tell you a little bit about the background. As was said, young people don't relate in the same way before. They have an overwhelming amount of information. Even though we were local, most young people didn't have a connection to us. They didn't know where we were and what we did. They didn't debate in the debate halls. One thing is they didn't write their own opinion pieces. A lot of young people didn't want to be interviewed. Even in stories that were about things that were important to them. A lot of them said they didn't want to be interviewed, because they didn't know enough.
Therefore, they figured they should have access to their local news. So that resulted in them gaining access. We're at eight schools now. And all students in the schools have access to their own subscription. Do we do this because we believe that the day they wake up and they are finished with high school they will pay for their own subscription? No. But we want them to know we exist and why we exist. We want them to understand what journalism is. We hope one day when they are 30 maybe they will be willing to pay for news.
We don't believe it is enough to just give them the subscription. Therefore the important part of the project is that we, the journalist, we travel around to schools and talk to the students. We spend about half of our time doing that. And then the other half we spent on making targeted journalism. On our news sites or on FVN sites, we have a dedicated section labeled young. Where we feature stories on topics that are important to them. This is a small section of both articles and opinion pieces. As you can see, it is entirely young people who are front and center.
Too often we think adults speak on issues that directly affect young people. That's something we're trying to change. We want young people to carry the stories and be the main sources in matters that concern them. If they don't speak up about the things that they are less likely tied to their own lives, we lose valuable perspectives. It is also about taking them and their experiences and everyday life seriously.
The screenshot is taken in May. When is when the graduation celebration period took place. A lot of the stories that you see here are about that. It is a major celebration that lasts for several weeks. If you include all of the plans and fundraising, it lasts for years for a lot of them. In May, this is one of the topics that we write the most about.
For instance, we travel to the biggest celebration festival associated with this celebration. We reported from there. For us, it is important to cover both the fun and joyful sides of the celebration and down to the right there you see one article that's about a group that won a prize at the festival. It is a feel‑good piece. One that might not have been written if we haven't taken and actively chosen to prioritise this kind of youth‑focused content. There's another story with two boys in the picture it clashes. Many in the class sold their tickets. It captures the atmosphere there and it brings attention to the ongoing political issue in Norway, the timing of final examples during the celebration period.
Creating articles is not enough, we think. We spend a lot of time on social media creating the content. We aim to be a serious and credible source on the platforms they spend the most time on. Almost all of the stories that we make we also make for TikTok. And the youth recognise us from there. That's where they see us. And they get to know that we exist through seeing us on social media. It is an example of one of the article series that we have made.
It is a project that we visited all of the cafeterias. We tested the food, spoke to the students, we made summaries of the prizes and interviews students and cafeteria staff. Each got its own article as well as a social media post. In the comments, the students engaged. They asked where are you coming to my school and they discussed which has the best cafeteria.
Also when they are out on the schools after the publishing of this, they ask us about it. We saw you were there. Why haven't you been here? How was the food there? And they are engaging.
It is not only about asking the youth to participate in the articles that we normally write. An important part of this is to cover the topics that are important in their life. Every high school student in Kazakhstan has some sort of relation to their cafeteria. Most of them are there every day.
The other part is the classroom visits. Teachers can progress to come and talk to the class about journalism. The introduction course can consistent of two things. We talk about journalism and what a journalist actually does and then we also talk about the participating in the public debate. Many students don't know what the journalist is and do. We come in to explain and teach them about source criticism, fact checking, media ethics, and what the work actually consistence of.
The second part focusing on the debate and the importance of participating in public discourse. We run exercises that help students expressing themselves. One example is everyone gets a table tennis record with a green site and red site. We present them with different statements. They show whether they agree or don't by showing the red side or the green side. The statements might be things like public transport is inadequate or all exams should be graded anonymously. In this way, everyone gets to express their opinion and take part in the shared exchange of views in the classroom without actually having to say anything.
In some cases, ‑‑ some cases are very, very quiet. Other classes can hardly stop discussing after we have this ‑‑ after we do this. Even in the most quiet groups, we often find that doing this kind of exercise a few times help them feel confidence enough to finally or eventually speak up and the discussions starts after a little while.
We also create custom programmes when schools progress them. When students are working on the specific topic. One of the photos here, one on the right is from a ‑‑ the one on the left is from a theme day at a school this fall focusing on fake news in the U.S. election. We brought several other people with us, including our political editor. This is something we do quite frequently and regularly. We bring other journalist in.
So, the whole office is involved in the project. For instance, we've taken crime reporters to classes studying law and sports journalist to sport classes to make the content more relevant for each group of students. Then the second photo there is from a newsroom. School classes can come by and see how we work and where we work and greet the journalist.
So a little bit about the results, so far in the project, we've met thousands of young people. A total of 3,380 students have created a user on FVN. The number of students that on the schools that we are at is a little bit over 5,000. That's quite a big part. We have class visits in addition to many other sessions, including the debate train for more than 600 students. We've also published 150 opinion pieces from young writers. This is a photo of some of them. They cover a wild range of topics. These are voices we might not have heard. Voices that have opinion section. A lot of the posts are about in one way or another what it is like growing up today.
Some of the headlines include you were cool if you beat someone up, kids today aren't really kids, and remember that mom and dad aren't always right. What's next? We don't have a stop date. We continue and we plan to panned on more schools. We get feedback from both students and schools and teachers and others. We share our experiences with people who want to do the same. So now the project is spreading multiple other newspapers in Norway are starting off their own project.
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: We have questions for anyone that wants to ask over there.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. I have my question. My English is not good. My question is for Katarina. I'm from Peru. We work to make sure people can access the information. TikTok is the platform with the reach. In April next year in Peru, we move. We play a significant role. Do you have something in place for online violence? You have a woman in the positive platform. If for the previous violence.
>> KATARINA MONETA: It is very different in Norway than where you are from. I do get death threats. The threat doesn't exist in Norway. I don't have any good advice there.
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: But we can add it is good to be part of the team. For example, you always get the comments in the TikTok feed. You don't feel that close.
>> KATARINA MONETA: For me, I've contacted the police a couple of times if I'm worried. If it is a real threat. Luckily, it's not been anything that's been dangerous for me. But we have systems that work very well. To protect us.
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: Any other questions here?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I was late. I have three questions. You don't have to get to all of them. I have the context in Geneva. Do you have backgrounds to the effectiveness of the work depending on the backgrounds and something I find is usually the more richer schools and I have a much easier time. What do you tell to students who have no idea what it is and do not treat the Internet as an object of political discussion? What do you tell the students? I'll stop there.
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: Maybe you can say something about different schools?
>> ADA BJØRANGER: Yeah. I'm guessing it is not that big of a difference from we reach different kinds of youth. It is the whole class. It is students from all different backgrounds. By being in the schools, we reach those that we probably wouldn't have reached with just giving them the subscription, for example.
>> KATARINA MONETA: We find something that's important is make content with people and not about people. Especially when trying to reach different minorities.
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: Yes. Our project which is seated in Oslo, people have money and people who have less money. You need to go to the different groups and talk with their language. Is there another question over here? Yeah. You have a question, yeah.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm from the Dutch community. Thank you for the highlighting of the technical and solutions to problems. I'm happy to hear they are interested in youth. They have to navigate through so much content. How do you prioritise with your fact checking work and targeting young people have their participate? How do we decide what's kind of content to interact with and what kind of news to share with them?
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: You will not reach everything. The time limit is coming close. You have to see what's viral. That's important. You need to have contact. You need to talk with the young people, meet them, and hear what's important for them. It is really easy for adults to tell what is important. We need to see what is important for them.
>> KATARINA MONETA: Yeah. I agree. There's so much information out there. Meeting that information with more information isn't necessarily what we should be doing. We should try to filter out what is actually important. For them. But that's a challenge. Trying to figure out what is important. That's why we try to do. Rather than just giving them more and more and more information all the time.
>> SØLVE KURAAS KARLSEN: That's the good part. The Internet never forgets. If you something, it will come back to you. We are out of time. Please keep on the conversation. Thank you.
