More than forty people from all over Georgia tried to ‘debug’ Georgian politics by developing communication campaigns on the topic of extreme political polarisation, during an event entitled "Communicathon", organised by DRI and Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) on 14-16 July in Tbilisi.

After an introduction on the topic of political polarisation by Ana Natsvlishvili, GYLA Chairwoman, participants got insights on why extreme polarisation is harmful and how it negatively affects Georgian society.

The second day kicked off with a training on viral campaigns from Levan Lepsaridze, co-founder of Leavingstone and a training on visuals in communication campaigns conducted by Nino Macharashvili, ForSet Creative Director.

After getting some theoretical insights, participants pitched their first ideas and started working on developing communications campaigns. Advised by mentors, teams worked for two days on videos, posters and websites which would promote the concept of political pluralism and engage citizens in political life.

Eight campaigns were presented on the last day of the event. One of the teams argued that “Polarisation will leave you single”, another suggested use of Virtual Reality technologies to tackle the issue. Poster competition and videos which would encourage people to focus on the real issues were also among developed ideas.

The winning idea is a series of cartoons which show how politicians try to polarise Georgian society and encourages citizens to take an active role in fact checking political messages.

DRI and GYLA will work with the winning team on developing the idea into a fully fledged campaign.