PRESS RELEASE: Award Winning Young Creators Bring Fresh Insight to the Fight Against Disinformation

An EU-supported event in Rome brought young creators, researchers, policymakers and citizens together to showcase how youth-led innovation, critical thinking, and ethical AI can strengthen society’s resilience against disinformation.

Rome, Italy, 20th November 2025 – In the heart of Rome this afternoon, young designers, students, educators, policymakers and community leaders came together for Thinking Through the Noise, an event that placed people, not technology, at the centre of the conversation about disinformation, critical thinking, and the future of ethical AI.

Hosted at UNINETTUNO, the gathering highlighted the Commission’s commitment to empowering citizens, nurturing digital literacy, and strengthening democratic resilience across Europe. Through open dialogue, creative showcases, and live demonstrations, participants explored how AI can enhance human reasoning rather than overwhelm it.

A Conversation About People, Not Just Platforms

Opening remarks from Francesco Saverio Nucci of UNINETTUNO,, and Peter Friess of the European Commission, set the tone for the afternoon: defending information integrity begins with giving people, especially young people, the tools to reflect, question, and make sense of the digital world.

Building on this, Massimo Magaldi, TITAN Coordinator, presented the core achievements of TITAN, an EU-funded project that has spent the past three years designing an AI-based Citizen Coaching Ecosystem grounded in human-centred values. TITAN’s work focuses on helping individuals strengthen their own judgement by engaging in structured, Socratic-style dialogues that encourage curiosity and self-reflection.

A platform  demonstration by George Petatis of NCSR “Demokritos” showed how the system sparks deeper thinking, guiding users to examine credibility, biases, and reasoning behind online content, without dictating what to believe.

Celebrating Youth, Creativity, and Critical Reflection

At the emotional heart of the event was the award ceremony for the Critically Yours design challenge, an international competition endorsed by Sapienza University of Rome and the Cumulus Association. Supported through the TITAN project, the challenge invited young creators from around the world to imagine new ways of making media literacy engaging and accessible.

Teams from across the world submitted  interactive prototypes and short films that brought media literacy to life, through storytelling, playful learning, and imaginative digital experiences. Each submission reflected a simple but powerful idea: young people are not passive targets of misinformation, but active designers of a healthier information space.

The jury, described by Alessandro Polini of UNINETTUNO, selected two outstanding entries for the first-place awards. The first winner, Filtered Realities (by Soni Sakshi & Haripriya Dabbiru, National Institute of Design, India), offers an immersive interactive experience where users toggle between distorted and accurate versions of the same news event, demonstrating how framing, emotional triggers and manipulation can subtly shift meaning.

The second winner, OneMinute (by Qin Longyue, Ohio State University), presents critical thinking as a temporal, embodied and intentional act—via a web-based interactive journey that invites users to pause, reflect, and respond to disinformation through the lens of the TITAN Socratic AI coach

Prof. Lorenzo Imbesi, President of the Cumulus Association, underscored how creative disciplines can illuminate paths forward where technology alone cannot.

“With the support of the European Commission, TITAN has demonstrated that human-centred AI can strengthen democratic resilience. What we saw today is a community, especially young creators, building solutions that put people’s judgement and autonomy first.” said Massimo Magaldi

Shaping the Future Together

In the closing discussion, participants reflected on how critical thinking can become a core digital skill for all Europeans; how AI can support, not replace, human autonomy; how youth-led innovation can inform future policy and democratic engagement; and how Europe can continue building a resilient, people-first information ecosystem. Their shared message was clear: a healthier digital future is not built by algorithms alone, but by people reflecting, questioning and working together.

More information about TITAN and the winning projects: 👉 https://www.titanthinking.eu/challengewinners

Press contact:

Susie Ruston McAleer, susie@21cConsultancy.com