The school is designed for students and young professionals in computer science, journalism and philology. It aims to present how the methods of traditional linguistic analysis are applied, which helps to identify statements that need to be verified, as well as the methods in the field of automatic natural language processing. In addition to providing useful knowledge and skills for text analysis from social media, the school integrates knowledge from various philological disciplines and develops useful skills in the field of information literacy.

The summer school is financially supported by the GATE Institute and is free for participants.

The program is specially developed and innovative and the content is prepared with the participation of the whole team. It includes Assoc. Prof. Dr Milena Dobreva from the GATE Institute and Silvia Gargova, who is currently an intern at the Institute. A special guest is Prof. Kalina Boncheva from Sheffield, who also heads the research and applied research domain on disinformation at GATE, Assoc. Prof. Petya Barkalova from the University of Plovdiv, Dr Irina Temnikova, Dr Hristiana Nikolova and PhD student Ruslana Margova.

The aim is to engage students in this modern field of study and to help librarians have more knowledge in the field, as their work with readers involves checking various information sources.

“The big provocation for this school is the look at the analysis of social media through the Bulgarian language, this makes it unique. I am excited about the topic of preserving the Bulgarian language, even as a boutique language. I look forward to working in the next two days, “said Dr Evelina Zdravkova, a lecturer at UniBIT and a participant in the school.

“The participants in the school were selected as a result of the great interest caused by the announcement of the event. We had twice as many candidates as the available places. We are glad that a community is being created with representatives of various academic and library institutions – Sofia University, American University in Blagoevgrad, UNIBIT (the University of Library Science and Information Technology), Plovdiv University, University of Ruse and Ivan Vazov National Library, ” said Assoc. prof., Dr Milena Dobreva from the GATE Institute.

“This is only the first of a series of summer schools in the field of disinformation. The next ones will be more technology-oriented. In addition, we will offer other similar events on various topics from our applied research areas. We are already preparing a summer school on cybersecurity, which will take place in the coming months, “said Prof. Silvia Ilieva, director of the GATE Institute.

The event attracted 25 participants.