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The training was developed by AFP’s award-winning digital investigations team, with the support of the Google News Initiative. Every journalist will receive a certificate after successfully completing a module.

Essential online skills for all journalists

Sifting through misinformation is now a key skill for coverage from breaking news to elections, the war in Ukraine, the Covid pandemic or following the latest trends on social media.
AFP developed the courses to reply to an urgent need for all journalists, whatever their beat, to be equally at ease in the digital world as in the real one.

Flexible, certified courses

AFP’s new platform provides short modules for working and future journalists to complete in their own time, with videos, examples, quizzes and tips from its global digital investigations service.
The platform includes 10 modules of around one hour each in English and French. The content is designed for all levels of experience, providing training at no cost to boost essential digital skills and save time searching for reliable information while dealing with online sources in breaking news situations.
More advanced courses cover techniques for deeper investigations, tackling health misinformation, and steps to anticipate and deal with online harassment.
In the coming months, the platform will be updated with new examples, exercises and webinars, and training in Portuguese and Spanish.

Get started straight away by visiting the AFP Digital Courses platform here.

“Rapid developments on social media platforms and fast-moving disinformation mean that journalism skills constantly need to be updated. We want to share learnings from our digital investigations team with all journalists, helping them to work more efficiently and safely online,” said Phil Chetwynd, Global News Director of AFP.

“In today’s online world, journalists play a key role in helping us understand important topics as they unfold and helping us sort fact from fiction. Our partnership with AFP is designed to provide journalists with essential skills to tackle misinformation and support their reporting. This is part of Google’s broader efforts to support the news industry by providing journalists with tools and training to find, verify and tell news stories online, and since 2015, Google has provided training to more than 500,000 journalists around the world,” said David Dieudonné, Google News Lab Lead, France Italy and Spain.