Speakers

Dan Evon

Dan Evon is the senior manager of education design at the News Literacy Project and is the lead researcher and writer for RumorGuard, NLP’s educational platform that teaches fact-checking skills to the public. Prior to joining NLP in 2022, Dan worked as a reporter for Snopes.com, the internet’s oldest fact-checking site, where he monitored disinformation networks and debunked viral rumors. Dan earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of New Orleans, where he studied journalism, philosophy and film history.

Mariam Gersamia 

Mariam Gersamia is a professor and media psychologist at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU, Georgia). She received her doctoral degree in journalism studies (2004) and post-diploma education in body-oriented psychology (2017). With 23 years of experience in academia, she was in charge of the journalism and mass communication department and programs, twice-elected as a member of the academic council at TSU (2010-2015). For now, she is in charge of the English taught graduate program “Media Psychology and Communications” at TSU.
Besides her academic career, she cooperated with local and international organizations. She is the manager of media programs at “Transparency International – Georgia” and is a founder of the NGO “media Voice”. Mariam worked for the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia as the head of the PR Department and Minister’s adviser (2006-2009), was an Executive Director of the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia (2009-2014). Mariam is a member of international scientific associations and editorial boards. She is the Eastern Partnership Civil Society fellow (2022-2023) and an honorable citizen of Louisville (USA).

Erkan Saka

Erkan Saka is a professor of media and journalism studies at the School of Communication at Istanbul Bilgi University. He was recently a research scholar at Anthropology at University of California, Irvine (Fall 2018) and Science and Technology Studies at MIT (Spring 2019). His recent and current research topics include citizen journalism and social movements, information disorder, digital web archiving and internet histories, critical algorithm and AI studies, and metaverse and diversity. He is a longtime political blogger (erkansaka.net) and a coordinator of a local TV show on social media (sosyalkafa.net). He is the author of Social Media and Politics in Turkey. A Journey through Citizen Journalism, Political Trolling, and Fake News (Lexington Books, 2019) and of the book chapter titled "Big data and gender-biased algorithms" (in The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, New York: Wiley Blackwell).

Moderator:

Gülin Çavuş 

Gülin Çavuş is a Co-founder & Head of Strategy at Teyit, a leading Turkish fact-checking platform. After studying Global Politics and International Relations at METU and Binghamton University, she received her Master’s degree in Urban Policy Planning and Local Government. She attended journalism training at Uğur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Foundation and worked as a journalist for several news organizations. She worked as a press advisor at The Grand National Assembly of Turkey. She was awarded the International Fact-Checking Network Fellowship in 2017 and worked on refugee misinformation problems. She has conducted OSINT training for journalists and journalism students since 2016. She is also a member of IPI’s National Committee in Turkey and a member of the Governance Body at the European Fact-checking Standards Network.