Preserving Information Integrity in Election Times: Latest insights and lessons from Germany, Romania & Poland
March 4, 2025 | 14:00 to 15:15 CET | Online
Discover election-related analyses produced by the EDMO network ❯
Targeting the very foundation on which our democratic societies rely, disinformation campaigns that undermine electoral processes have become a pervasive phenomenon across the EU and globally. Being the first EU member state to even cancel an election after electoral integrity had been significantly compromised, Romania’s extreme experience of 2024 once more epitomized the fundamental threat disinformation represents for the viability of democracy.
As three of the six largest EU member states head to the poll this spring, this 75-minute panel hosted by EDMO draws on national insights from Germany, Romania, and Poland to inform an EU-wide, solution-oriented exchange on electoral disinformation and preparedness. Unpacking several harmful dynamics around digital political communication as well as national experiences in countering those, the panel features the following interdisciplinary experts from the EDMO network.
Meet your Speakers
Tommaso Canetta is deputy director of Pagella Politica and Facta news, mainly dealing with European and international projects involving our newspapers. In particular, he coordinates the fact-checking activities of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) and the Italian Digital Media Observatory (IDMO), he is a member of the Governance Body of the European Fact-Checking Standard Network (EFCSN) and of the Taskforce of the Code of Practice on Disinformation of the European Union.
Christina Elmer is Professor for Digital Journalism and Data Journalism at TU Dortmund University, Germany. Previously, she was deputy head of editorial development at DER SPIEGEL, where she had co-managed the relaunch of the digital platform and established the data journalism department. Christina studied Journalism and Biology. She is a shareholder of the human rights organization AlgorithWatch and a board member of Netzwerk Recherche, Germany’s largest association supporting investigative reporters.
Madalina Botan is an Associate Professor and senior researcher at SNSPA Bucharest. She specializes in media studies, focusing on online disinformation and EU regulations like the Code of Conduct on Disinformation and the DSA. A member of the EDMO Hub—Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory on Disinformation, she contributes to various international research on polarization, public opinion formation, and technology modeling of virtual public spheres. Her latest co-authored book explores media diets and their impact on civic and political engagement.
Member of Demagog since 2016. Currently in a role of the Director of International Affairs. Member of the Strategy Board of the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO). In 2022, he was a member of the Working Group on Disinformation about the War in Ukraine, established under the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). He Holds a PhD in political science, specializing in Ukrainian politics.
Meet your Moderator
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.