A two-day conference called "Comments, hate speech, fake news and regulation of public communication", brought together around 40 scholars in Zagreb on Thursday, who will present their works on new media challenges, the fight against hate speech and fake news, and freedom of expression in the media.

The event was organised by the Electronic Media Agency and the Medijska Istrazivanja magazine.

Boris Senker of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which co-organised the conference, said that the new media reality had shown that the issue of personal freedoms had become much more sensitive and less clear, commending all researchers who had decided to deal with that topic.

The conference will, among other things, discuss the legal aspects and freedom of speech in regulating public communication, the fight against misinformation and hate speech, reader comments as a form of political participation, and the role of self-regulation in regulating misinformation and unacceptable forms of speech.

The conference will hear lectures by researchers from Italy, Great Britain, Hungary, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Sweden and Croatia.