On June 15, the fifth annual “Tvapatum” media conference entitled “People and the Media” launched in Yerevan.

During the two-day conference, experts from the United States, Russia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Georgia and Armenia will explore the new opportunities and challenges facing the modern media, and how the new realities affect communication with the audience.

The guests of “Tvapatum 2018” are Bill Shribman, Senior Executive Producer of PBS Boston Public Broadcaster; Stan van Engelen, Chief Editor of VPRO Dutch Public Broadcaster; Barbara McCormack, Vice President of Newseum Education; Mikhail Kozyrev, Producer and Anchor of Дождь TV Company; Jim Fry, Chief Editor of Polygraph.info fact-checking platform; Nora Livet, Digital Officer at the International Committee of the Red Cross; Rayhan Demytrie, BBC South Caucasus Correspondent; Paul Mihailidis, Professor of Civic Media and Journalism of Emerson College in Boston; and Nata Dzvelishvili, Executive Director of the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics. 

Media and education, media literacy, the role and significance of the public media, exposure of misinformation, coverage of Armenia’s Velvet revolution: these are among the topics, questions, and issues “Tvapatum 2018” panels and workshops will explore together with media professionals, as well as students and active citizens, teachers and professors, and media consumers in general.

Conference organizers have selected the chamomile as the symbol of “Tvapatum 2018” to challenge the audience to trust or not to trust, to verify or not to verify, to disseminate or not to disseminate. These questions will help the participants to unfold the intrinsic dynamic of media-society relations over a cup of chamomile tea.

The Tvapatum media conference is made possible through USAID support within the framework of the Media for Informed Civic Engagement project. The event is organized by the Media Initiatives Center in partnership with Internews and support from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, the International Committee of the Red Cross, IREX, and Multimedia Education Center (Georgia).

Conference details are available at http://conference.tvapatum.mediainitiatives.am.