Tunisian Federation of Journalistic Directors Organizes Co-Creation Workshop
The Tunisian Federation of Journalistic Directors, in partnership with Savoirs Éco, Expertise France, and the European Union, organized a co-creation workshop on April 30, 2026, at the Kyriad Prestige Tunis Hotel. The event brought together journalists and researchers with a common goal: to make economic research more accessible, readable, and useful to the public debate.
Objective of the Workshop
The workshop, moderated by Karim Benamor, aimed to bridge the gap between the academic and media worlds. Taieb Zahar, president of the Tunisian Federation of Journalistic Directors, emphasized the initiative's ambition: "Today, we are taking action. We want to connect the world of research, often confined to its laboratories, with the world of media." The goal is to make research accessible to a broader audience and orient it towards more applied and publishable production.
Structuring the Workshop
The workshop was structured around a simple principle: academic studies and policy briefs should not be limited to PDF format. They can be transformed into articles, infographics, videos, radio debates, podcasts, or other formats. Participants worked on concrete economic topics, such as informality, public debt, business climate, youth unemployment, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, mobile payments, banking competition, exports, responsible consumption, geo-economics, and regional development.
Presentation of Policy Briefs
Sofien Rejeb, a member of the Tunisian Federation of Journalistic Directors and editor-in-chief of The Point TN, presented the work already undertaken on twelve policy briefs produced within the framework of Savoirs Éco. The goal is to facilitate journalists' work, enabling them to transform policy briefs into articles, videos, or readable topics.
Launching the Passerelle Média Dynamic
The workshop also marked the launch of the Passerelle Média dynamic. Khaled Aouij, a member of the Tunisian Federation of Journalistic Directors, stated that the federation aims to play a role in relaying, accompanying, and advising researchers in their relationships with the media.
Importance of Credibility
Beyond dissemination, credibility was at the heart of the discussions. Hédi Hamdi, a member of the Tunisian Federation of Journalistic Directors' board, emphasized that media outlets bring an essential element to researchers: credibility. In an environment saturated with social media, journalistic work remains indispensable, including in specialized press, which prioritizes quality over quantity.
Challenges of Scientific Popularization
The issue raised by Habib Zitouna, president of the ASECTU, led to an in-depth debate on the conditions of scientific popularization. He noted that academic research does not always target the general public, and researchers are not trained to communicate with the media. Scientific popularization is a discipline in its own right, and media outlets and researchers must better understand each other's constraints, particularly when it comes to numbers, nuances, language, and interpretation.
Artificial Intelligence Sequence
The sequence dedicated to artificial intelligence was another highlight of the workshop. Karim Benamor demonstrated how tools like NotebookLM, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity can help understand a study, identify numbers, generate leads, prepare questions, or produce educational formats. However, the debate also highlighted the limitations of these tools, including data confidentiality, hallucination risks, and the need for verification.
Production Exercises
The workshop concluded with production exercises in journalist-researcher pairs. Several groups transformed research topics into concrete editorial proposals, including short videos, explanatory articles, radio series, reels, infographics, and web formats. Some groups even produced a prototype video in under an hour, illustrating the potential of co-creation.
Conclusion
This workshop marks an important step in building a collaboration space between media outlets and researchers. The goal is not only to publish more but to produce more reliable, comprehensible, and useful economic information for citizens, businesses, and public decision-makers.
