Recently, the European Commission released an article on Medium, referring to the 10 actions that the Commission undertakes in order to tackle ‘one of the biggest challenges democracies face today’, disinformation. This phenomenon is nothing new, however it can ‘affect public opinion, create divisions in society and undermine trust in public institutions and electoral systems’.
At the same time, the growth of social media has made it both easier and faster for disinformation to spread across several channels. The European Union has been listening to the concerns raised about this global phenomenon and decided to bring together the right organizations to tackle it.
In particular, one of the 10 measures that the EU undertakes to counter disinformation is to facilitate the work of fact-checkers by selecting Truly Media to empower the European Observatory against Disinformation, with a collaborative platform for verification. As the European Commission mentions in its article ‘the work of independent fact-checkers and researchers is becoming more important in the age of disinformation. By bringing together teams from different EU countries and creating a more cohesive community that can share their experiences, they can continue to fine-tune the way they work. One way the EU helps is by investing in new technologies that verify content and track the spread of disinformation across social media, such as Truly Media.’
By incorporating a multitude of tools, Truly Media allows teams of journalists, investigators, fact-checkers, or researchers working in the same organization to collaboratively assess the validity of online content, such as photos, videos, social media accounts, etc. Journalists can select the most important items for their story and verify each item individually using a verification checklist and integrated third-party verification tools like Google Maps, Mappilary, or TinEye.
In addition to being used by broadcasters and media organizations, Truly Media:
It is a great honor for the whole team behind Truly Media, Athens Technology Center (ATC) and Deutsche Welle (DW), to be part of this significant effort with the EU to ‘tackle the spread and impact of online disinformation in Europe and ensure the protection of European values and democratic systems’.
Below you can see how the EU is fighting disinformation
You can read the whole article on the 10 ways the EU is fighting disinformation here.