You read that right. We've launched a 12-month media and digital project that runs from April 21 to March 22. It's all about countering the rampant disinformation from fake news and more with a powerful argument. It also increases media literacy among those who participate and those who follow along.

Why we do it

Disinformation and manipulation have many faces, especially in the digital space: while societal discussion mainly revolves around misinformation and lies, there are multi-layered challenges we face every day when consuming digital media.

How we do it

We have a diverse group of exciting young people between 14 and 26 who are actively participating. From trainees to financial officers, from high school students to college students, it's all here. Different cultural and religious backgrounds come together, as well as different political views or sexual inclinations. pics4peace deliberately focuses on diversity, so that different perspectives can be brought to bear, enrich the discourse and achieve the best results.

Each month, the project participants, alone or in pairs, regularly present articles from their local digital newspaper, the Main-Post, as well as another medium that they would not normally consume, and comment on this on Instagram in videos via the Story and in feed posts. There they also get feedback from our more than 3,000 followers; they want to know what people outside think about what's on their minds.

llustrator Romina Røsa supports the posts every month with a new pointed illustration.

In addition, there are monthly lectures or workshops by experts from all over Germany on media topics such as.

•     How can I tell if a robot or a human wrote the text?
•     Digital maturity
•     Media ethics in the digital space
•     How does a "verification unit" work? What can I do?

A project this big doesn't work without project management. Here, two competent young journalists and students have agreed to help:

Benedikt Teichmann, 23, graduate of the German School of Journalism, law student, freelance journalist and
Luzius Zöller, 23, scholarship holder at the Institute of Journalism (Munich), student of politics and sociology, and social media expert (center), both from Würzburg.

Here they introduce themselves on Insta. Beni and Luzius

Where you can find us

See for yourself how great the whole thing is going on Instagram (in the highlights, the individual participants introduce themselves) or on facebook.

Our partners

Such a big project needs of course partners, so that it also "gets under the people".

These are

the KLASSE project of the Main-Post, with more than 1,000 students and their teachers from Lower Franconia.

the Stadtjugendring with its 3,500 youth leaders and 44 different youth associations.

Our supporters

We would like to thank the Sparkassenstiftung der Stadt Würzburg as well as Demokratie leben Würzburg for their active support of the project and agree with their goals of fighting disinformation and promoting media literacy! THANK YOU!

We are looking forward to your feedback on the project! Just send it to kontakt@pics4peace.de or via social media.