This Action will set up a Belgian and Luxembourgish hub for research on digital media and disinformation (EDMO BELUX). It brings together an experienced and extensive network of fact-checkers, media, disinformation analysts, media literacy organisations and academics to detect, analyse and expose emerging harmful disinformation campaigns. Through rapid alerts in the network, fact checks and investigative reporting will reach first responders to disinformation (media, civil society, government) in order to minimize the impact of disinformation campaigns. In addition, through media literacy campaigns, EDMO BELUX will raise awareness and build resilience among citizens and media to combat disinformation. Finally, the hub will embed its disinformation monitoring, analysis and awareness into a multidisciplinary research framework on the impact of disinformation and platform responses on democratic processes.
The Action will focus on two countries at the centre of EU activity. It will investigate emerging disinformation campaigns relevant to politics in Belgium, its Dutch-speaking and French-speaking communities and Luxembourg, and has a local focus when conducting its impact studies research and building media literacy efforts. Complementary to the attention paid to national and community needs and given the central location of the hub, EDMO BELUX will monitor and disclose EU level disinformation campaigns. The network of experts thus will comprise not only Belgian and Luxembourgish, but also EU organisations working to combat disinformation. As disinformation campaigns rarely respect the boundaries of nations, this complement allows for a better understanding of underlying and common actors, vectors and tools of disinformation campaigns across the EU.
The Action includes 7 partners from four European countries: Vrije Universiteit Brussel -VUB (Belgium) that is coordinating the project, Athens Technology Center S.A. – ATC (Greece), Université Saint-Louis – USL-B (Belgium), EU DisinfoLab – EUDL (Belgium), Agence France-Presse – AFP (France), Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum vzw – IMEC (Belgium), CLT-UFA (Luxembourg).
ATC is responsible to set up the hub’s website and collaborative environment (based on Truly Media) and to make sure that the hub is interoperable with EDMO (e.g. content from EDMO BELUX will automatically be contributed to the EDMO portal and vice versa).
The Action started in October 2021 and will last for 30 months.
