The D-8 Media Forum on “Promoting Dialogue, Cooperation and Regional Solidarity” has opened in Baku, bringing together heads of media structures and leading media organizations from the member states of the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, as well as other high-level officials and prominent experts in the field.
Around 150 participants are attending the forum, including 71 representatives from 8 countries and the Secretariat of the Organization.
At the opening ceremony, Hikmat Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and Head of the Department for Foreign Policy Affairs of the Presidential Administration, read out President Ilham Aliyev’s address to the forum participants.
The President’s message notes that the media landscape is undergoing a rapid transformation. Unfortunately, the scale of disinformation, fake news, hybrid threats, deepfakes, the misuse of artificial intelligence, and other forms of manipulation is constantly growing in the global information space.
These factors, President Aliyev stressed, not only seriously affect the image and internal life of individual countries, but also undermine international stability as a whole and erode trust between states. Therefore, one of the key tasks of the D-8 Media Forum is to build robust cooperation between media structures of the member states in order to foster a truthful, impartial, objective and responsible information environment.
Within the framework of the forum, two panel sessions are scheduled on the themes “Responsible Journalism and Digital Innovation” and “Strategic Communications and Crisis Management.” In addition, a workshop will be held on “Media Ethics in a Digitalizing World: Technologies, Trends and Narratives,” where participants will discuss the challenges and opportunities arising from the growth of digital platforms and artificial intelligence.
The forum is expected to result in recommendations aimed at strengthening media cooperation among D-8 member states and advancing joint efforts to counter disinformation in the global information space.
