This pilot project aims to foster the active participation of young people in the Lake Geneva region in democratic life and to raise awareness of their role as future citizens. It offers interactive debate and co-creation workshops to unpack one of the major challenges facing contemporary democracies: disinformation in the age of deepfakes and artificial intelligence.
Informed participation is essential to democracy, and youth engagement plays a key role in societies’ ability to respond to information crises. In a context marked by the rapid circulation of content, the spread of disinformation, and the rise of artificial intelligence, it is crucial to understand how information is produced, disseminated, transformed, and instrumentalised.
Geneva’s international environment provides a particularly suitable setting for this initiative. It offers an ideal framework for exploring the implications of technological and geopolitical shifts on public debate at different levels and across diverse contexts.
Through interactive workshops in French and English, led by field journalists Maurine Mercier and Joseph Roche, participants will co-create a multimedia guide. These creative sessions will explore the mechanisms behind deepfakes, their implications for democratic systems, and ways to counter them.
The workshops are open to young people aged 15 to 25 and will include different modules. Participants will propose formats and produce media content aimed at identifying disinformation. The focus will be on investigative methods, verification practices, and the production of informed counter-narratives.
The multimedia guide will later be used in sessions organised in schools across the Lake Geneva region to foster discussion on democratic issues at both local and global levels.
Duration: January 2026 – April 2027
Funding: Fondation Leenaards, Media and Democracy Programme
Keywords: Media; information; disinformation; democracy; youth; journalism; creativity
Workshop journalists: Maurine Mercier, Joseph Roche
Research Assistant: Laura Maria Bello
For inquiries, please contact: decodeproject@graduateinstitute.ch
