"Escape Disinfo" Media Literacy Game ©

L. Mikalkevicius photo

Partner – Žinių ekonomikos forumas

Location – Visaginas, Vilnius and Vilnius region

Since 2021

The Escape Disinfo project aimed to improve media and information literacy among school students in diverse regions of Lithuania, and to equip teachers with the necessary tools and support through engaging youth-oriented formats to strengthen students’ critical thinking and teamworking skills. The project targeted students and teachers from different schools, with half of the students being drawn from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

The Escape Disinfo was an interactive game, organised in different schools for students in grades 6 to 12 and which consisted of ninety-minute sessions. The game included a trainer-led lessons of six inter-related tasks where the students solved various puzzles, riddles and performed collaborative activities and tasks on topics such as resilience to disinformation, media literacy, digital information and recognising fake news, images and propaganda.

This project also had a goal of integrating media literacy and critical thinking-related content into the general school curriculum and providing the students with the necessary skills to identify, analyse and respond to (un)intentionally misleading information. Since teachers in Lithuania currently lack adequate training in media and information literacy, the Escape Disinfo project addressed this issue by providing relevant knowledge, materials and trainings, during which the teachers gained advanced knowledge of media information literacy and developed the necessary skills to effectively teach students about media literacy and resilience to disinformation.

During the project:

Over 60 Escape Disinfo sessions were organised in various schools across different regions of Lithuania 

More than 1,300 students (grade 6–12) participated in the sessions

130 teachers participated in the trainings, acquiring media literacy and digital information management skills

85% of the students and 98% of the teachers indicated that they had gained new skills and knowledge in media literacy, which they will apply in the future