Report on the Summer School

The NEWSREEL2 Summer School was organized in Berlin between 26th - 30th September. The host of the event was Hostwriter, our partner from the NGO sector. The programme took place in Das Baumhaus, which is a sustainable solutions development agency and a socio-cultural project space.

During the five-day long event, students fom the five partner universities joined forces: they participated in some specific workshops given by lecturers and researchers of NEWSREEL2, as well as developed their own cross-border collaborative projects in the form of international groups.

On the first day, after the programme and the participant lecturers were introduced, students had some playful activities to get to know each other. The session was led by Julia Vernersson and Zahra Salah Uddin from Hostwriter. In the meantine, researchers of NEWSREEL2 organized a transnational project meeting to discuss the next steps of the project.

The summer school continued on Tuesday, when students took part two workshops. One of them was connected to cross-border journalism (lecturers were Dominik Speck from the Erich Brost Institute & Tina Lee from Hostwriter), while the other one was based on improving democratic sensibility (lecturer was Klára Smejkal from the Masaryk University).
In the afternoon, they started to brainstorming on possible group topics connected to the students assignments that they had to create before the summer school. The three main topics were: (1) composition of mainstream media coverage; (2) media consumption and trends; (3) trust in news and journalism. The main issues related to these three themes were collected as 'hot topics', then students selected a topic that was interesting for them. As a result of that, five groups were formed, which started to work on their project. The teams presented their specific project plans in the framework of a pitch session at the end of the day.

On the third day of the event, two additional wokshops were held connected to the fields of storytelling in social media (lecturers were Rita Glózer from the University of Pécs & Ana Pinto-Martinho from the ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon) and debunking disinformation (lecturers were Antonia Matei & Marian Popovici from the University of Bucharest).
After lunch, students continued to work on their project which they started the day before. At the end of the day, the groups reported on the progress of their project work.

On Thursday, the student groups finalized their project works with the help of lecturers, and created their presentations for the multiplier event. The programme ended with a relaxing session, where they were asked to give feedback on the summer schoool, based on some specific aspects.

On the final day of the Summer School, students attended the multiplier event of the NEWSREEL2 project with the title of "Shrinking Civic Space: New Media, Democracy & the Future of Journalism" and had the opportunity to present their project works to a professional audience.

The presented projects were: Transitioning to wind energy or just rambling about it?, Infectious Project – How COVID-19 became an infodemic, Journalicity.project, Beauty Check and #Tiktok Made Me Buy It.

Members of the groups were the following students:

Transitioning to wind energy or just rambling about it?: Martin Gunis (Masaryk University), Andra Muresane (University of Bucharest), Jakub Radan Dvorak (Masaryk University) & Nick Gehrmann (TU Dortmund).

Journalicity.project: Madalena Vieira (ISCTE - University Insitute of Lisbon), André Rocha (University of Pécs), Marie Kolajová (Masaryk University), Klára Huvarová (Masaryk University), Manu Magalhaes (University of Pécs), Mariana André Silva (ISCTE - University Insitute of Lisbon)

Infectious Project – How COVID-19 became an infodemic: Erica Fialho (ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon), Charlotte Groß-Hohnacker (TU Dortmund), Bjarne Overkott (TU Dortmund), Hammad Saboor (University of Pécs), Viktorie Motlochova (Masaryk University), Paula Hammerschmidt (TU Dortmund), Joana Lopes (ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon), Marta Rodrigues (ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon)

Beauty Check: Alexandra Stamatescu, Teodora Geambei & Anna Constantin (University of Bucharest)

#Tiktok Made Me Buy It:  Norbert Nemes (Masaryk University), Nguyen Xuan Thai (University of Pécs) & Meerimai Muratbekova (University of Pécs)

The teams of Beauty Check & #TikTok Made Me Buy It collaborated together to get some different perspectives on their similar topics.

After the presentations, all of them received a certificate of the successful completion of the Summer School.

Thank you very much for the amazing project works and a huge thank you for the team of Hostwriter for hosting such a great event!

Gallery from Monday to Thursday: https://newsreel.pte.hu/media/gallery/summer_school_berlin

Project presentations in the multiplier event: https://newsreel.pte.hu/media/gallery/multiplier_event_berlin_student_pr...

Photos: First two photos by Annamária Torbó
            Last two photos by Charlotte Groß-Hohnacker