EMIFund’s 2023 Annual Conference

The challenges raised by disinformation are in flux. Rapid developments and improvements of AI-technology change the way disinformation is produced, but also offer new means to identify and study disinformation campaigns. Changing attitudes from social media companies to share relevant data, such as the pay-to-use approach to APIs recently introduced by Twitter/X, hinder the effective study of online disinformation. At the same time, new and strengthened EU regulations offer novel tools to reverse these negative trends and counter hostile information operations that may harm citizens’ free participation to the civic discourse and distort democratic processes. This is particularly important in view of the 2024 European elections.   

In the past years, EMIF endeavoured to counter disinformation in Europe by supporting and strengthening the research community, media and civil society organisations fighting this pernicious phenomenon. The Fund worked hard to attain its goals by funding a significant number of projects in the action areas of fact-checking, media literacy, research, and investigations, as well as by fostering community-building at European scale. The EMIF Fall Event will present some of these projects and the impact they aim to achieve in the wider informational space. It will also promote an exchange of thoughts and cooperation between policymakers, scholars and practitioners engaged in countering disinformation. Feedback and insights shared by the participants will help the Fund to focus its efforts on current and emerging challenges, and tailor the next calls for proposals accordingly.

Finally, the event will be an opportunity to acknowledge the work done by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) and its network of national and regional Hubs. EDMO’s expert community is effectively contributing to the implementation of European counter-disinformation policies through an impressive set of actions, including monitoring of platforms, enhancing field research and fact-checking in critical areas such as elections, the war in Ukraine, climate change and more. Raising public awareness through media literacy and communication, as well as setting up methods and infrastructures for a more open and transparent access to platforms data for research purposes, underpin these efforts. We hope that this event will contribute to the ongoing discussion on how cooperation and networking among the many different actors working on disinformation in Europe can be boosted, so as to achieve ever more impactful outcomes. 

Programme

Thursday 16 November:

14:00 – Welcome coffee and registration

15:00 – 15:15 Opening remarks

15:15 – 15:30 Keynote speech

15:30 – 16:30 Panel 1 – Regulating disinformation in the European media landscape

16:30 – 16:45 Coffee break

16:45 – 17:45 Panel 2 – Lessons learned and future avenues for countering disinformation

17:45 – 18:00 Day 1 wrap-up

18:00 – 19:00 Cocktails

Friday 17 November: 

09:00 – 09:30 Welcome coffee

09:30 – 09:50 Opening session

09:50 – 11:05 EMIF Grantees Showcase Round I:

• Fact-checking
• Investigations

11:05 – 11:15 Coffee break

11:15 – 12:30 EMIF Grantees Showcase Round II

• Media and information literacy
• Multidisciplinary research

12:30 – 13:30 Parallel workshops:

• Effective communication of project results
• Tools for data analysis and visualization

13:30 – 14:30 Lunch

14:30 – 15:30 EUI-led thematic Breakouts

• The interplay between the EMFA, the Code of Practice and media pluralism in Europe
• Using technology to counter disinformation
• Climate disinformation

15:30 – 16:30 EDMO Hubs Thematic Session

16:30 – 16:45 Coffee break

16:45 – 17:45 Community feedback session: Funding priorities for 2024 and ahead

17:45 – 18:00 Closing remarks

Register