Brusel dá €2.2M malým online médiím na boj s fake news

Brusel dá €2.2M malým online médiím na boj s fake news

Call: EU grants for small-scale online media: supporting high-quality news products and tackling fake news

Authority: European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology

Budget available: The total budget earmarked for the co-financing of the projects under this call for proposals is estimated at EUR 2.200.000 (two million two hundred thousand euros).

The EU co-financing is limited to a maximum co-funding rate of 75% of the total eligible costs.

The maximum grant will be EUR 315.000 (three hundred fifteen thousand euros).

The Commission expects to fund up to 7 proposals.

Deadline for the submission of proposals is 30 November 2020.

Background: The objective of this call is to support the EU strategy to tackle disinformation and complement EDMO’s activities by providing funding to specific research projects on disinformation. Such projects, which include fact-checking and analysis of online propagation patterns, should be carried out by expert teams with a specific knowledge of information and media environments in one or more Member States.

The selected projects will focus their journalistic investigations and research activities around emerging digital media vulnerabilities and disinformation campaigns, which are of special relevance within the territory and/or linguistic area in which they will operate.

Activities to be covered by the Pilot Project:

1. Analysis and detection of harmful disinformation campaigns at national/regional level and their impact on society and democracy

Each proposal must describe how the project will:

 Promptly detect emerging disinformation campaigns with potential negative impact on public opinion-forming at national/regional level, and assess such an impact;

 Analyse relevant actors, vectors, tools, methods, dissemination dynamics, prioritised targets of disinformation campaigns, in coordination with EDMO;

 Actively contribute to the EDMO investigation and research activities, and promptly react to requests from EDMO linked to emerging disinformation issues.

2. Expose disinformation campaigns, including their impact on society and democracy

Each proposal must describe how it will ensure:

 The implementation of appropriate means of communication, including conferences and seminars, and a website connected to the EDMO public page, to be used to make public the outcome of the project’s activities;

 The involvement of media organisation(s) to carry out effective communication campaigns targeting relevant audiences. Cooperation with media organisations not directly involved in the projects could also be considered in order to extend the outreach of the research results.

3. Media literacy activities at national/regional level

Each proposal must describe how it will:

 Organise media literacy campaigns and events and create media literacy material targeted to the national/regional needs;

 Leverage on the exchange of good practices and materials stored on the EDMO platform as well as, if relevant, from available results of the Preparatory Action “Media Literacy for All”6. Contribute to EDMO’s repositories with newly created educational and training materials and, in particular, will develop specific training for journalists;

 Ensure that journalists working for the media organisations taking part to the funded projects will be involved in the activities carried out by the academic and fact-checking experts, so as to acquire the necessary knowledge of state-of-the art tools and techniques to detect and properly debunk disinformation campaigns.