Preliminary data from focus groups on fact-checking

As part of our Disinfo Academy project, we organised a number of focus groups covering all participating countries: Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The focus groups’ sessions took around two hours and we presented the participants with video-based news and recorded their screens as they proceeded to verify the information. As we are working towards the publishing of the full report at the end of this summer, we can share some preliminary data on the participants’ profiles:

• The total number of participants in the FGs was 49 (28 male, 21 female), with 26 in Bulgaria, 6 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 10 in Romania, and 7 in Turkey. The average age of the participants was 22.1 (21.54 for males, 22.86 for females), with an average deviation of 1.97.
• The participants were recruited from the following fields of university study: Journalism (13), Communications and PR, Media and visual arts, Digital communications (11), Balkan history and geopolitics, Political sciences (15), Criminalistics/criminology & security, Psychology, Medicine, Philosophy, Law (6), Project management (4).

We asked the participants to indicate the frequency of use of major social media platforms and the trust they place in them – stay tuned for more interesting data and analyses as they become available!