The European Commission has selected news agency AFP -following a public bid- to participate in three European hubs aimed at fighting disinformation in France, Eastern Europe and the Benelux countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The hubs – CEDMO in France; DE FACTO in Eastern Europe; and EDMO BELUX in the Benelux – will for the first time bring together fact-checking media, university analysts and specialists in media education to combat the spread of disinformation.
They will offer real-time fact checks on the biggest false stories and research into disinformation by leading universities as well as providing tools and tutorials to let people expose disinformation themselves.
• The anti-disinformation hubs will be linked to the European Digital Media Observatory, launched by the European Union last year and based in Florence, Italy.
In France, AFP will work with the media research arm of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, the French centre for media and information literacy CLEMI and leading fact checkers in the French media.
In Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, AFP will mainly work with the Charles University in Prague and the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies in Bratislava, which will work on improving algorithms to detect disinformation.
Finally, for the Benelux, the consortium will include notably Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the RTL news group in Luxembourg.