Western Balkans Youth Need More Skills to Recognise Online Fakes: BIRN Report

Photo illustration: Pexels/Anastasia Lashkevich.

A new report, based on research conducted by BIRN, says more effort is needed by official institutions and media professionals to enhance the skills of people aged 18-30 in six Western Balkan countries so they can distinguish whether the information they receive online is credible or false.

The report also concludes that online platforms need to improve standards and transparency to enable young people to recognise false information.

Aida Ajanovic, the author of the report, Next Generation What We Know: Mis/disinformation in the Western Balkans, said that its main message that “young people in the Western Balkans are not simply failing to ‘check the facts’.

“They are navigating fast, fragmented and highly personalised information environments where credibility is often judged under pressure, through social and platform cues: who shared something, whether it looks official, how often it appears, and how others react to it,” Ajanovic added.

The report, which was financed by the Brittish Council, looked into how people aged 18-30 across the ‘Western Balkans 6’ countries – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – access information and respond when it is not factual.

Ajanovic explained that while they understand the importance of verifying the information they receive, real-time fact-checking is often impossible because “it competes with time, attention, emotional overload and trust deficits.

“Young people often check selectively, rely on trusted people, or disengage when the information environment becomes too intense. This means that resilience cannot be built by placing the burden on young people alone,” she said.

According to the report “media and information literacy provision remains inconsistent” across the region. It is mainly provided by civil society organisations and not necessarily included by local authorities in school curricula, which makes it difficult for young people to obtain the necessary skills to check whether the content they see or read online is factual or not.

The report advocates “enhancing media and information literacy as a practical, cross-curricular skill set, supported by ongoing professional development for teachers”.

Ajanovic explained that it is not sufficient to tell young people to “check more” because of the fast dynamics of social media algorithms. She argued that they need “practical skills, trusted intermediaries, better information design, and stronger accountability from media, institutions and platforms”.

She said the report advocates that reliable information should be made “easier to recognise and access in the spaces young people already use”.

“That includes clearer standards, greater transparency, stronger enforcement, and platform accountability, while safeguarding independence and freedom of expression,” she said.

“Young people need practical skills, but they also need information environments that do not unnecessarily make trust, verification and participation difficult,” she added.