Resilience Against Disinformation – Chernobyl in Series and Books

WORKSHOP CONCEPT

A media education program was designed for an educational project funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and sponsored by the Ukrainian government to promote resilience against disinformation.

International case studies were used to combine journalism standards with practical exercises on site. Teachers and students were taught practical knowledge transfer and research techniques using examples of historical, environmental and current debates on the Covid-19 pandemic. One of the subjects of the study was the popular science communication - from film and literature - of the Chernobyl reactor disaster in 1986. The main aim here was to examine the scientific context of the radiation exposure of the disaster for rescue workers and reactor control personnel, to whom most of the course participants had a direct connection. Interviews with contemporary witnesses, material on the individual biographies and scientific studies were used to examine the plausibility of the HBO series Chernobyl (2019) and the portrayals of historians and publicists such as Serhii Plokhy and Svetlana Alexievich.