First Choice 4 Young News

The main objective of the project „First Choice 4 Young News“ is to enable teachers to encourage young people’s interest in serious journalism, to promote critical media literacy and to raise awareness about AI and fake news in digital media channels.

To achieve this, working meetings and discussion summits on specific topics will be held in Austria, Italy and Slovenia, as well as a closing event in Vienna 2026. Members of the participating educational organisations will be in discussions with journalists from different types of media and AI experts. The discussion summits will be held in a hybrid format so that interested teachers and groups of students can also take part.

These topics will be discussed at the upcoming summits:

1. How can educators better understand today’s journalistic challenges?
2. Why is it so important for journalism to inform young people early on about the importance of serious news and dangers of fake news?
3. What are the main dangers of disinformation and how can these challenges be addressed in schools?
4. What are the opportunities of artificial intelligence and what are the counter-strategies to fake news?
5. What pedagogical approaches or concepts could/can we develop or what has already proved successful?

The project will create a transnational community of practice to share and pilot teaching activities and useful materials to encourage learners to think critically, especially when dealing with algorithms, information bubbles and echo chambers, as well as AI-generated content.

Finally, a multilingual guide with practical and proven strategies for teachers to combat disinformation and promote digital information literacy will be produced for direct use in secondary school classrooms. Accompanying filming will document the project, resulting in an educational video to support classroom activities.

Partners and associates of the Erasmus+ project

• Future Learning Lab, Verein zur Förderung digitaler Bildungsangebote (AT)
• Lern.Film.Studio, Verein für eine kreative und verantwortungsvolle Mediennutzung im Filmbereich (AT)
• Presseclub Salzburg (AT)
• Istituto Statale di Istruzione Superiore „Paolo Sarpi“ (IT)
• Srednja ekonomska šola in gimnazija Maribor (SI)
• Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore Biagio Pascal (IT)
• Zavod Antona Martina Slomška (SI)
• Höhere Lehranstalt für wirtschaftliche Berufe – HLW19 (AT)
• Bundeshandelsakademie Neumarkt (AT)
• BG/BRG Klosterneuburg (AT)
• BHAK1 Salzburg (AT)