ChangingTIDE’s Media Literacy Incubator organised by Dublin City University, took place on 30 July 2026, in Dublin, Ireland. The event brought together young people aged 18 to 30 in a workshop aimed at providing them with the skills to recognise and combat fake news.

Participants in the workshop included students, PhDs, community workers and healthcare professionals, aged 18-30, from different nationalities. Their conversations reflected on the rise of disinformation and identified potential avenues for intervention. These included:

1. Paying more attention to sport, culture, and religion as potential vectors for disinformation and manipulation;
2. Holding public meetings on controversial topics and having difficult conversations;
3. Teaching children to question their assumptions;
4. Supporting NGOs working on media literacy and combating fake news.

Special attention was given to the connection between inequality and fake news, and the need to support organisations working for and with marginalised communities. Participants also discussed how to navigate people’s strongly held beliefs, whether it is possible to change someone’s mind with facts or media literacy, and whether it is really necessary to intervene in every instance.

Participants gained practical understanding and skills from leading experts, including Dr Eileen Culloty and Dr Ricardo Castellini (DCU FuJo), Martina Chapman (Media Literacy Ireland), and Emily Lynch (Coimisiún na Meán). The event’s agenda can be found here.

After the event, participants had a chance to enter the Changemakers Programme, a central innovation of the ChangingTIDE project. Based on engagement and contributions throughout the workshop, four participants of the event will be selected as Changemakers, and will join a transnational group working on disinformation and media literacy, getting the chance to:

• participate in a tailored mentorship programme to create public awareness campaigns addressing disinformation;
• partake in further project activities, including 3 in-person events in Brussels and a second event in Ireland;
• have a chance to present their campaigns to relevant EU interlocutors at a final concluding conference in Brussels.