United Against Disinformation: A Truly European Response
The Vice-President of the European Parliament Eva Kaili invites you to hear about the latest innovations in the fight against disinformation.
We receive more information in 24 hours nowadays than people in the 15th century did in their entire lives. We come across, like, and share hundreds of messages a day. Some of this content is intentionally meant to lead us astray. European citizens are exposed weekly to misleading information taken out of context, exaggerated, omitted, or even invented. A strong European response against disinformation is crucial to ensure the protection of European values and democracy.
Our discussion will look in detail at how disinformation affects our democracies (with Eva Kaili), the European media ecosystem (with Deutsche Welle), the trust in the scientific community (with the European Science-Media Hub) and will propose optimistic views for the future when it comes to the action of an independent platform like EDMO to increase societal resilience to disinformation (EDMO and ATC).
The creation of EDMO in 2020 following the 2018 Commission’s detailed action plan against disinformation is a key element to work toward a deeper understanding of online disinformation, its mechanisms and actors, challenges, and impact on society. EDMO supports the work of a multidisciplinary expert community to counter the threat disinformation represents to democracy. To increase efficiency, EDMO Hubs act locally across every EU member state and provide European citizens with the evidence-based information they can trust.
Registrations are open on a first-come-first-served basis for a maximum of 40 participants.
Programme
Registrations are closed for external members without accreditation to access the premises
Meet the speakers
Lauri Tierala works at the European University Institute (EUI) School of Transnational Governance as Programme Director for the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). Until December 2021, he was a Partner and Senior Advisor at Miltton, a public affairs and communications consultancy. Before that has doing global and European public affairs for Finnair, an airline. Lauri has a long record of European policymaking, having worked earlier in at e.g., the European Parliament and European Movement and as a special advisor on EU affairs to e.g. the Prime Minister of Finland. He holds a M.Soc.Sc. from the University of Helsinki.
Paula Gori is the Secretary-General and Coordinator of EDMO. She joined the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in 2017 where she is a member of the management team. Prior she was the Coordinator of the Florence School of Regulation – Communications and Media, which offers training, policy and research activities on electronic communications regulation and competition and she collaborated with the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, which she coordinated during the initial set-up phase back in 2012. She was for several years the Scientific Coordinator of the Annual Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics and she is one of the authors of the report for the European Commission on European Union competences in respect of media pluralism and media freedom. Paula has a legal background and is a qualified civil mediator.
He is the deputy director of Pagella Politica, the main Italian fact-checking outlet, and the coordinator of the fact-checking activities of EDMO. He contributes to the activities of IDMO, the Italian national hub of EDMO, works on several European projects (e.g. the European Code of Practice on Disinformation, or the European Fact-Checking Standards Network Project) and writes about political fact-checking, especially about legal issues.
Jochen is Dep Head of Research and Cooperation at Germany’s international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The topical focus of his work over the past decade has been on disinformation analysis and verification of digital content, and relating all this to news reporting.
Jochen also lectures at the Free University Berlin, is an active supporter of Lie Detectors, an NGO that brings media literacy into classrooms, sits on the Advisory Board of EDMO (European Digital Media Observatory) and is AB Chairman of CEDMO (Central EDMO).
Nikos Sarris is a member of the EDMO Executive Board and is heading the activities of Athens Technology Center on countering disinformation. He has been involved in many projects focusing on the semantic ‘understanding’ of news content and the assessment of its trustworthiness, coordinating the development of two related products: TruthNest and Truly Media, the latter in cooperation with Deutsche Welle.
Eva Kaili has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2014. In January 2022, she was elected Vice-President of the European Parliament for the second half of the 9th legislature. Her responsibilities include the Parliament’s ICT Innovation Strategy, Informatics & Telecommunications, the STOA Panel, CSR, and replacing the President for Middle East, business associations, and multilateral bodies.
She is the first woman to have chaired the STOA Panel and the Centre for Artificial Intelligence. She is a Member of the Committees on Industry, Research and Energy; Economic and Monetary Affairs; Budgets; Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age; and the Pegasus Committee of Inquiry.
Eva has worked on promoting innovation as a driving force of the European Digital Single Market. She has been the draftsperson of legislation on blockchain, big data, fintech, AI, cybersecurity, cybersurveillance, EFSI2, InvestEU, and FuelEU Maritime.
Prior to being elected as MEP, Eva was a Member of the Greek Parliament. Before that, she worked as a journalist. She has a BA in Architecture and Civil Engineering, and a Postgraduate degree in European Politics.
Krisztina Stump is Head of the Unit in charge of combatting online disinformation at the European Commission. The unit drafted the Commission Guidance in May 2021 on how to strengthen the Code of Practice on Disinformation and accompanied the drafting of the new Code by the signatories, presented in June 2022.
Lauri Tierala works at the European University Institute (EUI) School of Transnational Governance as Programme Director for the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). Until December 2021, he was a Partner and Senior Advisor at Miltton, a public affairs and communications consultancy. Before that has doing global and European public affairs for Finnair, an airline. Lauri has a long record of European policymaking, having worked earlier in at e.g., the European Parliament and European Movement and as a special advisor on EU affairs to e.g. the Prime Minister of Finland. He holds a M.Soc.Sc. from the University of Helsinki.
Paula Gori is the Secretary-General and Coordinator of EDMO. She joined the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in 2017 where she is a member of the management team. Prior she was the Coordinator of the Florence School of Regulation – Communications and Media, which offers training, policy and research activities on electronic communications regulation and competition and she collaborated with the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, which she coordinated during the initial set-up phase back in 2012. She was for several years the Scientific Coordinator of the Annual Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics and she is one of the authors of the report for the European Commission on European Union competences in respect of media pluralism and media freedom. Paula has a legal background and is a qualified civil mediator.
He is the deputy director of Pagella Politica, the main Italian fact-checking outlet, and the coordinator of the fact-checking activities of EDMO. He contributes to the activities of IDMO, the Italian national hub of EDMO, works on several European projects (e.g. the European Code of Practice on Disinformation, or the European Fact-Checking Standards Network Project) and writes about political fact-checking, especially about legal issues.
Jochen is Dep Head of Research and Cooperation at Germany’s international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The topical focus of his work over the past decade has been on disinformation analysis and verification of digital content, and relating all this to news reporting. Jochen also lectures at the Free University Berlin, is an active supporter of Lie Detectors, an NGO that brings media literacy into classrooms, sits on the Advisory Board of EDMO (European Digital Media Observatory) and is AB Chairman of CEDMO (Central EDMO).
Nikos Sarris is a member of the EDMO Executive Board and is heading the activities of Athens Technology Center on countering disinformation. He has been involved in many projects focusing on the semantic ‘understanding’ of news content and the assessment of its trustworthiness, coordinating the development of two related products: TruthNest and Truly Media, the latter in cooperation with Deutsche Welle.
With a background in international relations, science policy & communication, she has been working in Brussels for the last 15 years, in EU institutions and consulting firms.
