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Campaign Fighting Anti-Foreigner Disinformation

On 25th January 2021, the Integration Centre Prague launched a state-wide information campaign ‘Lack of Data Gives Rise to Prejudice’. Its aim is to spread awareness of Czech citizens about the life of foreign nationals in the Czech Republic. The campaign is a reaction to the ever-increasing amount of disinformation that has been flooding the media and public space.

Disinformation is one of the greatest threats to today’s global society. Through modern technologies, it often spreads much faster than honest facts and true data. One of the disinformation topics are foreigners, who often become targets of various manipulations, prejudices, and lies. The campaign shows how prejudice is formed and how easy it is to spread it.

The campaign features information posters and video spots in which prejudices take the form of animated monsters. They leap from one person to another, whispering various oversimplified and generalizing statements about foreigners. “Our videos are definitely not meant to offend prejudiced people. What we want to do is to encourage people to check the facts before writing a social network post or forwarding a chain email,” explains project coordinator Ekaterina Gazukina. For this purpose, we created an information website www.atlaspredsudku.cz, where people can test their ‘immunity’ to disinformation, look into a gallery of the most common prejudices, and access verified data.

There are two agencies behind the creative idea as well as the actual creation of the campaign: Goodkin and AZN kru., whose teams have extensive experience with the issue of the integration of foreigners. “The topic of disinformation is very important to us, especially since I myself came to the Czech Republic from the former Yugoslavia. It was back in the 1990s when the perception of foreigners was not as controversial as it is now,” says Mladen Grebo, communication strategist of the Goodkin advertising agency, about his motivation for the creation of the campaign.

The campaign can be seen online and in the streets of Prague and regional capitals until 7th March 2021. In the school year 2021/2022, it will be followed by special workshops for pupils of the second stage of primary schools and secondary school students.