The GenderED Civic Hackathon took place from September 25th to 27th in Perugia, Italy, bringing together 40 participants from across Europe to tackle the issues of gender disinformation and misogyny through public campaigns. Participants were divided into eight teams, each tasked with addressing one of three challenges focused on combating gender disinformation.
The event was organized by FORMA.Azione Giove In Formatica, the lead partner in the GenderED Coalition Project, alongside the DAISSy Research Group of Hellenic Open University, Savoir Devenir, the Sofia Development Association, and the Bureau for Integration and Social Innovation (BISI).
Over the course of two days, teams worked closely with seven mentors, all experts in their respective fields, to develop their ideas into practical communication projects. These mentors included:
- Boyana Voynova, a designer and visual artist, engaged in community-based and collaborative social design,
- Tsvetelina Hristova, a media literacy advocate and coordinator of sCOOLMedia.com,
- Jennifer Guerra, a feminist journalist and author,
- Karen Ricci, a DEI advisor with over two decades of experience,
- Pauline Bouty, creator of "La Mal Biaisée,"
- Willy Lafran, a festival organizer, and
- Vasileios Thanopoulos, editor-in-chief of Greece's leading LGBTQI+ press.
Teams 1, 5, and 8 worked on Challenge 1: “Monitoring gendered disinformation on social media platforms.” Teams 2, 3, and 7 addressed Challenge 2: “Challenging gendered disinformation on social media platforms,” while Teams 4 and 6 took on Challenge 3: “Cancelling the impact of misleading and offensive visual and textual representation of women and girls online.”
The final day saw teams, mentors, and jury members gather for project presentations. The jury was comprised of:
- Panayiotis Chaldaios, a political science graduate and trained family psychotherapist,
- Marianna Stefanitsi, a researcher with an MA in Cultural Management,
- Laurence Allard, a communication sciences lecturer,
- Pascale Garreau, co-founder of Savoir Devenir,
- Jovana Martic, GenderED Coalition’s visual designer, and
- Denitsa Lozanova, Executive Director of BISI and a strategic leader with a background in European Studies.
For Challenge 1, Team 1 presented the "Gender Disinformation Observatory," an educational platform featuring a reporting tool for tracking the spread of gender disinformation and flagging hateful speech on social media. Team 5, the overall winner of this category and recipient of the Intersectionality Award, introduced "Gender Desinfo House," a website tackling gender stereotypes across different countries through video, audio, and text-based reports. Team 8’s project, "Rocks," proposed the creation of an NGO aimed at monitoring social media and language, with the motto “We can move mountains, one rock at a time.”
In Challenge 2, Team 2 presented "Tabubu," a mobile game where players repair a broken Earth—symbolizing society and gender discrimination—by answering quiz questions. Team 7, winners of the “Media, Information, and Literacy” award, developed "GenderWhat?," a website designed to create new narratives on gender bias, including an online toolkit with visual templates. Team 3, who won Challenge 2, developed an online platform using humor to highlight double standards in gender disinformation, along with a "Media Fair Play Badge" to recognize journalists who challenge gender biases and promote truthful reporting.
For Challenge 3, Team 4, the challenge winner, presented "We Are All Sexist, Bro," an online platform paired with a guerrilla marketing campaign for public restrooms. The platform included a feature where users could assess their own sexist narratives and see how widespread they are. Team 6 introduced "#ShameOffMe," an educational toolkit website offering resources, personal stories from women who overcame public shaming, a support network, and accessibility features for individuals with disabilities and neurodiverse users.
All projects will be reimagined and integrated into a public campaign by the GenderED Coalition Project team to combat gender disinformation and misogyny.
The GenderED Coalition project is funded by the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) under the Creative Europe Program (CREA), in response to the call CREA-CROSS-2023-MEDIALITERACY.
