The fact-checked disinformation detected in the EU
European fact-checkers focused a lot of their efforts in the past days and weeks in detecting and tackling disinformation concerning the situation in Ukraine.
At the beginning of the year, as the crisis was growing in intensity, the spread of false news about Ukraine detected in the EU was still very small. Fact-checkers detected a growth in the first half of February, even if the qualitative and quantitative levels of the disinformation was not alarmingly high.
After the military actions against the whole Ukraine started in the morning of 24 February, though, fact-checkers witnessed the situation changing substantially and the disinformation about the events growing both in quantity and dangerousness.
Periodic Insights and Early Warnings: Disinformation Narratives about the war in Ukraine
Insights highlighting the main disinformation trends related to the war in Ukraine will continue to be issued on a bi-weekly basis while early warnings will be available in four languages on a weekly basis. These briefs are based on the fact-checking analysis provided by the organizations of the EDMO fact-checking network which are collected in the searchable repository available in the table below.
Here there’s a list – which will be periodically updated – of fact-checking articles that the EDMO’s fact-checking network have published during the crisis.
Stay informed with our news around the war in Ukraine
At times of crisis or conflict, disinformation can be rapidly generated and spread. Media literacy initiatives are a crucial pillar of the European strategy to combat disinformation, and must be equally rapidly generated and spread if they are effectively to reach audiences vulnerable to disinformation.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, on February 24, a large number of accounts, whose main goal was to spread pro-Russian disinformation, were detected on Twitter. Many of these profiles are suspected to be bots, but a large part could also be managed by actual human beings that act coordinately to spread false or misleading narratives about the conflict.
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a member of the EDMO task force on Ukraine and has been tracking the monetisation of harmful disinformation on the conflict in Ukraine for over a month.