EDMO at a Glance

EDMO at a Glance
Our Mission
The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) brings together fact-checkers, media literacy experts, and academic researchers to understand and analyse disinformation, in collaboration with media organisations, online platforms and media literacy practitioners.

EDMO will deploy a platform to support the work of a multidisciplinary community with expertise in the field of online disinformation. EDMO will contribute to a deeper understanding of disinformation relevant actors, vectors, tools, methods, dissemination dynamics, targets, and impact on society.

Who leads this effort?
The EU-funded EDMO project is based at the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance in Florence, Italy. Other consortium partners are Danish research centre Datalab at Aarhus University, which is specialised in digital social research; Greek Athens Technology Center, which provides the technological support and infrastructure and access to specialized fact-checking tools for the detection and analysis of misinformation; the Italian Pagella Politica, one of the country’s major fact-checking organisations; and the EUI-based Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF), which is focusing on policy analysis. The consortium recently welcomed as new members the University of Amsterdam’s Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), which will strengthen EDMO with its long-standing tradition in media and communication research; the Belgian Media &
Learning Association (MLA), to broaden efficient media literacy activities; and the Brussels Europe MediaLab (Fondation EURACTIV), which will contribute especially to strategy and co-operation with third-party organisations; as well as the Slovak Center for Democracy and Resilience at GLOBSEC (open-source investigations) and the think tank Integrity Institute (policy advice) as subcontractors.
Within EU member states, EDMO works with national and regional hubs to implement activities tackling disinformation at the grassroots level. The 14 hubs cover all 27 EU Member States and Norway.
EDMO is governed by an Executive and an Advisory Board composed of experts from research, media and fact-checking organisations. EDMO’s governance structure is independent from public authorities, including the European Commission.
EDMO’s Activities
Run a secure online platform supporting the academic analysis of disinformation campaigns and providing public information to raise awareness about disinformation
Tools and services for fact-checking activities able to:
  • Facilitate the identification of relevant and trending news content published and shared online and allow joint fact-checking activities 
  • Facilitate the verification of online content including deepfakes also through the use of machine learning and natural language processing tools 
  • Expedite fact-checking activities and peer-review of fact-checks, also with the support of real-time translation tools 
  • Facilitate the production and online distribution of news articles resulting from fact-checking activities 
Tools and services for academic research activities enabling data analysis and network-oriented analysis with functionalities such as:
  • Extraction of graph representation 
  • Community detection 
  • Identification of key-players of an input graph based on relevant indicators 
  • Tracking and visualisation of the path travelled by a specific news piece through sharing, mentioning, retweeting, and other forms of information forwarding in social media 
Access to the public and/or open data repositories
Training and outreach
  • Training activities on topics related to disinformation, open to all relevant stakeholders, including fact-checking actors, researchers, journalists 
  • Webinars and face-to-face meetings on the functions and tools of the EDMO secure online platform 
  • Conferences and events 
Supporting and facilitating the coordination of independent fact-checking activities in Europe
  • Mapping of fact-checking activities in Europe 
  • Searchable directories aggregating fact-checks and media literacy material from external repositories 
  • Facilitation of joint fact-checking activities and exchange of best-practices 
  • Creation of a fact-checking digital community 
Supporting and facilitating the coordination of academic research activities on disinformation in Europe
  • Mapping of European academic activities studying the disinformation phenomenon in various disciplines 
  • Repository with relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature 
  • Repository of policy papers and media literacy material 
  • Calls for research proposals to access data of online platforms 
Providing support to public authorities in the monitoring of the measures put in place by online platforms to limit the spread and the impact of disinformation
  • Cooperation with relevant Observatories to report on trends in the online media ecosystem 
  • Support to public authorities, including ERGA, in the monitoring of the policies, put in place by online platforms to limit the spread and the impact of disinformation 
  • Report to the European Commission about main trends of the disinformation phenomenon