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Good practice Imported

Use Facts: Disinformation-Resilience Training for Pensioners

North Macedonia · Skopje · See the North Macedonia profile · See the Skopje profile

Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 59% 68/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2022, North Macedonia's Institute of Communication Studies has partnered with the Pensioners' Union, funded by the British Embassy, to train 500+ retirees to spot disinformation. Trained pensioners scored 6-12% higher on identification tests than untrained peers.

500+ people
Pensioners trained (2022-2025)
6-12 percentage points higher
Disinformation-identification accuracy, trained vs untrained pensioners (2022-2025)
~2x ratio
Verification-skill gains, gender-focused-trained female pensioners vs general cohort (2022-2025)
Use Facts: Disinformation-Resilience Training for Pensioners

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Institute of Communication Studies (ICS)
Period
2022-2025
Region (NUTS)
MK00
Keywords
media literacy, disinformation, digital literacy, civic education, older adults

Context

North Macedonia's Institute of Communication Studies (ICS) runs 'Use Facts', a 2022-2025 project funded by the British Embassy Skopje, pairing investigative journalism and public-awareness campaigns with media-literacy training for citizens, journalists and civil-society groups.

Objectives

Improve pensioners' ability to recognise manipulated or misleading content, given older adults are among the groups most vulnerable to disinformation.

Activities

Structured media-literacy training for pensioners delivered through a strategic partnership with the Macedonian Pensioners' Union, including gender-focused disinformation training for female pensioners.

Results

Over 500 retirees trained. ICS's internal evaluation found trained pensioners identified disinformation 6-12% more accurately than untrained peers, and female pensioners who completed gender-focused training showed roughly double the gains in applying advanced verification techniques.

Conclusions

These figures come from ICS's own internal evaluation as reported by a third-party media-literacy network rather than an independently audited external study; funding is a single three-year grant (2022-2025) with no confirmed continuation identified.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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