Use Facts: Disinformation-Resilience Training for Pensioners

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.

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

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

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.

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.