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ComCom and Media Lab Award the Winners of the Global Media Literacy Hackathon
The Communications Commission and the Media Lab have successfully concluded the second global media literacy hackathon for young people. The contest saw 40 teams consisting of 130 participants submitting their projects, from which the top 10 were selected. For 2 days, the participating teams worked actively on improving their projects together with professional mentors, after which a competent jury selected three winners, taking into account the relevance of the problem, the effectiveness of the solution, and the sustainability of the project. The Communications Commission awarded the winners 5,000, 3,000 and 1,000 GEL respectively. The main topics of the hackathon were disinformation, digital literacy and cybersecurity. The event aimed to identify challenges surrounding media literacy and innovative ways of solving them.
Participants were given training on “How to Validate an Idea” and “How to Create and Test a Prototype,” where they learned how an idea is validated before starting work on a project; how to make a product valuable to the user; and how to create and test a product prototype.
In addition to the trainings, the teams worked intensively with professional mentors for two days to improve their projects. Startup advisor and mentor Tatia Okriashvili held meetings with the teams on the subject of marketing and idea presentation. In the field of UI/UX design, the participants were assisted by UI/UX designer Revaz Kakabadze. With regards to customer acquisition, the teams were consulted by startupper Demetre Mildiani. Startuper Sandro Bolkvadze worked with the participants on product development, while the meetings on team management were led by the head of Fablab Iliauni, Avtandil Mghebrishvili.
The top prize was won by the Web Boyzz project, which is a browser extension that aims to strengthen online security for children. The platform provides parents with information about their child's online activities, blocks content that is inappropriate for minors, and teaches teenagers through games why a particular website or online activity may be harmful to them.
The second prize was won by the Emotisense project, which seeks to facilitate the detection of disinformation online. It includes a browser extension that analyses the emotional tone of the content and employs a chat bot to help users assess the information.
The third prize was won by the Severity AI project, which identifies vulnerabilities and errors in code and simplifies the remediation process.
The second edition of the global media literacy hackathon was part of the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Week, which aims to raise public awareness about the importance of media literacy.
