DisinfoCheck Roundup January 2023
Edito
Welcome to the second edition of the EDMO BELUX newsletter, the Disinfocheck Roundup. This newsletter aims to bring together relevant studies, reports and resources about disinformation in Belgium and Luxembourg. It is available in all the languages our hub covers (French, Dutch, German, Luxembourgish and English).
2022 was a big year for the members of EDMO BELUX. Our fact-checkers partners have already published more than 400 fact-checks across the five languages we tackle. The research team published its first round of reports along with in-depth investigations, while media literacy experts are working on a repository showcasing media education material and training events. In line with this, we are planning on delivering more content in 2023 hoping that it will foster debates amongst the members of our hub, with other hubs across the EDMO network, and within our larger community.
In this newsletter, you will find a summary of the latest content available, including the latest EDMO BELUX publication, “The US anti-vax group Children’s Health Defense’s expansion to Europe”. In the “Fact-checkers’ corner”, we showcase false claims of conversions to Islam at the Qatar World Cup, the real story behind the “Twitter files” – as dubbed by Elon Musk-, as well as fact-checks related to the World Economic Forum and the COVID-19 pandemic. In the publication sections, you will find links to the in-depth CrossOver investigation on how Russian narratives get pushed on Twitter whenever the term “nazis” appears on the platform, as well as the links to the executive summaries of EDMO BELUX’s first round of scientific reports. Finally, you will find other announcements and upcoming events.
We hope you will have a good read.
Victor Wiard, Post-doctoral researcher at the Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, leading partner on the EDMO BELUX research activities.
Latest EDMO BELUX news
- The US anti-vax group Children’s Health Defense’s expansion to Europe. This investigation analyses Robert Kennedy Jr’s anti-vax movement Children’s Health Defense efforts to expand its activities in Europe, with Brussels being central to this development.
- Economic analysis: A framework for measuring news media markets’ financial viability in relation to disinformation – Executive summary of D.3.1.1. This research component aims at monitoring the financial viability of the news media sector in Belgium and Luxembourg, and to produce a monitoring matrix incorporating indicators related to advertising and subscription revenues, (in)direct public support and philanthropy. EDMO BELUX researchers present the conceptual building block of this task.
- Quantitative study: Who is susceptible to (political) disinformation? Evidence from Flanders, Belgium – Executive summary of D3.2.1. In this study, EDMO BELUX researchers investigate patterns of susceptibility to disinformation amongst citizens from Flanders, the largest region of Belgium. First, the study considers to what extent citizens’ socio-demographic characteristics and socio-political attitudes help us understand which citizens are more (or less) likely to believe false claims. Second, the study zooms in on the effect of exposure to disinformation online.
- Qualitative study: Folk theories of info-democratic disorders in Belgium and Luxembourg – preliminary results from an ongoing qualitative audience study – Executive summary of D3.2.2. In this study, EDMO BELUX researchers provide a preliminary analysis of the folk theories of info-democratic disorders in Belgium and Luxembourg. It focuses on how audiences themselves theorise the nexus between information disorders and democratic disorders and relies on a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured interviews with informants in Belgium and Luxembourg.
- Policy analysis: Monitoring policies at the level of Belgium, Luxembourg and platforms. The EDMO BELUX research team prepared the policy aspects of fighting disinformation in Belgium and Luxembourg. This part of the research has produced not one but three articles, which are titled:
- Tough luck if you’re in BELUX? Platform responses to disinformation in Belgium and Luxembourg. This article by Samuel Cipers and Trisha Meyer reviews how platforms have taken action to counter online disinformation in Belgium and Luxembourg. You can access the article here.
- What is political? The uncoordinated efforts of social media platforms on political advertising. This blogpost by Samuel Cipers and Trisha Meyer analyses the initiatives of Meta, Google, TikTok, and Twitter related to political advertising. You can access the blogpost here.
- Room for improvement. Analyzing redress policy on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. This article reviews how users can appeal (in)action taken against content and/or accounts on four major social media platforms. It provides policy advice in the context of the next steps of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), in particular Article 17 concerning internal complaint handling and redress mechanisms.
Our fact-checkers' corner
Since the beginning of our project, our fact-checkers partners, AFP, RTBF and RTL Luxembourg, have published 474 fact-checks across the five languages covered by EDMO BELUX!
In this section, we highlight the recent top fact-check (in number of views) for each language. Visit our website to discover other fact-checks!
Did you check our top fact-checks?
NewsLetter - November
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| Fact-Checked by RTL Lëtzebuerg (in English): Fact Check: Do electric cars catch fire more often than combustion engine cars? | Fact-Checked by RTL Lëtzebuerg (in Luxembourgish): Does Luxembourg "benefit" from the European budget? | Fact-Checked by Clemence OVEREEM, Jan RUSSEZKI, AFP Duitsland (in Dutch): The Ukrainian military has not currently introduced conscription for women | Fact-Checked by RTBF (in French): Labello Challenge: the concern around the new TikTok challenge for young people should be put into perspective | Fact-Checked by Feliks TODTMANN, AFP Deutschland (in German): Annalena Baerbock did not say that Germany would take in up to ten million refugees from Ukraine |
| Read More | Read More | Read More | Read More | Read More |
Did you know?
- Did you know that our media literacy partners, Mediawijs and Média Animation both have a website with tips for parents about media in the family? Parents will find on those websites information about gaming, cyberbullying, and sexting. And their questions about news and disinformation will get answered. You can find the publication in Dutch and in French.
- The Flemish ‘News In The Class’ project introduces this year 3 new challenges for classes to spice up the learning about news and disinformation. Prepare your class to become a real journalist or opinion maker in one of three new challenges. There is something for every age: from making your own news items to fact-checking to creating and selling your own opinion.
- Odysee: list of geo-blocking requests shows the EU and EU Member States are far from doing enough to enforce the law. This analysis, focused on video-sharing platform Odysee, and based on a 3,000+ list of access restrictions, shows that the EU and Member States are far from doing enough, even on possibly illegal content.
- The EDMO network expands to all EU Member States through six new hubs. With the six newly established EDMO hubs joining the eight existing ones, the EDMO network will expand its coverage to all 27 EU Member States as well as Norway, in the EEA. The new hubs should be operational by the beginning of 2023.
- EDMO monthly fact-checking brief. EDMO has published its latest monthly fact-checking brief on 16 January, which focused on Muslim migrants and Ukrainian refugees in the disinformation’s gunsight.
- Why is “Nazis” regularly trending on Twitter in Belgium. This CrossOver analysis shows how Russian official narratives get pushed whenever “nazis” show up on the social media platform in Belgium.
Events & Announcements
- 13 February. Join Dr. Rakoen Maertens, from University of Cambridge and UGent Alumnus, and Tim Verheyden, journalist at VRT, for a discussion about “Psychology and the effect of disinformation”.
- 27 February. Are you a teacher? Join the Mediawijs/StampMedia “Start Fact Checking Challenge” with your students.
- 28 February. Deadline to apply to EMIF’s 4th funding round of Call for Boosting Fact-checking Activities in Europe.
- 31 March. Register your class of first-year secondary school to the “News Maker Challenge” by Mediawijs and have them enter the competition to become the best newsmaker!
- The EU DisinfoLab 2022 Annual Conference took place on 25 & 26 October. Conference materials, including the Conference dossier, slide decks and a picture selection from this conference, can be found here. Recordings from some of our sessions are available on EU DisinfoLab’s YouTube channel! Don’t forget to mark your calendars: #Disinfo2023 will take place in Krakow, Poland, on 11 & 12 October, 2023!
- The International Committee of the Red Cross has 2 job openings in Luxembourg: a Cyber Security Policy Adviser and a Cyber Security Policy Outreach Coordinator.
The DisinfoCheck Roundup is available in Dutch, French and German!
Any questions, remarks or feedback? Send an email to [email protected].
This project has received funding from the European Union under Grant Agreement number INEA/CEF/ICT/A2020/2394296. This website reflects the views only of the independent Consortium, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.
Copyright © EDMO BELUX
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EDMO BELUX is a cross-community, multilingual collaboration between Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Mediawijs, Média Animation, EU DisinfoLab, Agence France-Presse, RTBF, RTL Luxembourg and Athens Technology Center.
DisinfoCheck Roundup November 2022
Edito
Welcome to the first edition of the EDMO BELUX newsletter, the DisinfoCheck Roundup. This quarterly newsletter aims to bring together relevant studies, reports and resources about disinformation in Belgium and Luxembourg. It is available in all the languages our hub covers (French, Dutch, German, Luxembourgish and English).
Our countries are still at risk of disinformation. A recent study from the Media Pluralism Monitor classified that Luxembourg was on a high risk of online disinformation. In Belgium, the CrossOver project highlighted how YouTube algorithms were pushing China’s narrative about XinJiang, silencing the nature of atrocities happening there.
Facing this threat, the work of EDMO BELUX is crucial to support initiatives and journalists in exchanging good practices and knowledge about the phenomenon, and the general public to be trained and warned about disinformation spreading.
We envision our work as the work of a community. We look forward to meeting you in Luxembourg at our EDMO BELUX Cross-Community Network Exchange on 25 November. And don’t be shy: send us relevant updates or resources that you think would be helpful for other members of the hub. “Sharing is caring” is definitely one of our mottos.
Trisha Meyer, Professor in Digital Governance and Participation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Centre on Digitalisation, Democracy and Innovation and principal investigator of the EDMO BELUX project
Latest EDMO BELUX news
- The disinformative ecosystem: Link sharing practices on Telegram as evidence of cross-platform amplification. On 9 November, we’ve released our latest research that focuses on understanding the information-sharing habits of 30 Dutch-speaking Telegram far-right and conspiracy communities to gain insight into the broader media sphere to which they pertain and on which they feed. Findings show that disinformation is an ecosystem of cross-platform interaction and contamination where mainstream and alternative media coexist. You can find the research here.
- First EDMO BELUX scientific workshop. EDMO BELUX held its first scientific workshop on the “Insights on the impact of disinformation from multiple perspectives” on 28 October. It was the chance for the hub’s researchers to present their first reports after one year of research. The EDMO BELUX presentations and discussions were preceded by a keynote presentation by Professor Divina Frau-Meigs (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, UNESCO chair Savoir-devenir and President of the Savoir-Devenir association). Event materials, including executive summaries, will shortly be available here.
- Media Literacy. EDMO Belux’ Media Literacy partners, Mediawijs and Média Animation, participated in the first “Wednesday Webinars on Digital & Media Literacy in Europe”. In their presentation they tried to answer the question “What educational materials do teachers share / want?” You can find the recordings and a short recap here.
- Room for improvement. Analyzing redress policy on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. This article reviews how users can appeal (in)action taken against content and/or accounts on four major social media platforms. It provides policy advice in the context of the next steps of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), in particular Article 17 concerning internal complaint handling and redress mechanisms.
- Disinformation reporting. Have you spotted a case of suspected online disinformation? The rapid alert form is a tool that you can use to report to our EDMO BELUX team any suspected case of disinformation you might have seen online!
Our fact-checkers' corner
Since the beginning of our project, our fact-checkers partners, AFP, RTBF and RTL Luxembourg, have published 363 fact-checks across the five languages covered by EDMO BELUX!
In this section, we highlight the recent top fact-check (in number of views) for each language. Visit our website to discover the other available fact-checks!
Did you check our top fact-checks?
NewsLetter - November
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|
|
|
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| Fact-Checked by RTL Lëtzebuerg (in English): Fact Check: Do electric cars catch fire more often than combustion engine cars? | Fact-Checked by RTL Lëtzebuerg (in Luxembourgish): Does Luxembourg "benefit" from the European budget? | Fact-Checked by Clemence OVEREEM, Jan RUSSEZKI, AFP Duitsland (in Dutch): The Ukrainian military has not currently introduced conscription for women | Fact-Checked by RTBF (in French): Labello Challenge: the concern around the new TikTok challenge for young people should be put into perspective | Fact-Checked by Feliks TODTMANN, AFP Deutschland (in German): Annalena Baerbock did not say that Germany would take in up to ten million refugees from Ukraine |
| Read More | Read More | Read More | Read More | Read More |
Did you know?
- Doppelganger. EU DisinfoLab exposed end of September a Russia-based influence network that has been operating in Europe since at least May 2022. The Doppelganger campaign uses multiple “clones” of authentic media and targets users with fake articles, videos and polls. To do so, the malicious actors behind the operation bought dozens of Internet domain names similar to the ones of authentic media and copied their designs (in English).
- Disinformation on Donbass is a Google autocomplete away. The recent CrossOver investigation demonstrates how French speaking Belgians were hinted at searching for dubious sources when looking up the word “Donbass” in the Google search bar (in English).
- Trends Report. The first BENEDMO trends report, based on the outcomes and backgrounds of fact-checks published by the hub’s partners, came out in October, with a focus on the war in Ukraine (in Dutch).
- Geolocation and fact-checking. A short video prepared by AFP fact-checkers explains how geolocation has been a crucial part of fact-checkers and journalists’ work, and the steps to identify the news location. Learn the basics via this video (in English).
- How to teach about disinformation? Mediawijs developed this article unveiling 6 tips about how to teach about disinformation. It is supported by this short video (in Dutch with English subtitles).
- “Happy Birthday for Vladimir Putin from Belgium”. This tweet (in English) looks into the deleted TikTok-video on which a group of Russian speaking people dressed in a military uniform and weapons in hands send their greetings from Belgium to Vladimir Putin for his birthday.
Events & Announcements
- 10 November. The third European News Media Forum (ENMF) will focus on innovations in the news media sector and will bring together speakers from press, TV, radio, magazines, online media, etc.
- 16 November. As fact-checkers get ready for the upcoming European elections, join the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) conference in Brussels! The project will present both its Code of Standards for independent Fact-checking organisations and its newly appointed Governance Body.
- 16 November. Join the last webinar in the series organised in collaboration with Media Learning and EDMO about Media Literacy in practice in France Spain, Portugal, Belgium and The Netherlands.
- 25 November. Join us in Luxembourg for our second EDMO BELUX Cross-Community Network Exchange! This event will bring together the community of researchers, fact checkers, analysts and media literacy professionals working on disinformation in academia, media, government, civil society in Luxembourg around interactive sessions!
- 25 November. “Fake news, manipulation and disinformation: how to combat and protect ourselves from it?” Join the discussion forum at the Belgian Senate.
- 2 December. The European Media and Information Fund (EMIF) is hosting its first Annual Event in Lisbon.
Publications
- Disinformation networks: A quali-quantitative investigation of antagonistic Dutch-speaking Telegram channels. Research conducted by EDMO BELUX partner Tom Willaert and colleagues (in English).
- Deep State Phobia. Narrative Convergence in Coronavirus Conspiracism on Instagram. Research conducted by M. Tuters & T. Willaert (in English).
The DisinfoCheck Roundup is available in Dutch, French and German!
Any questions, remarks or feedback? Send an email to [email protected].
This project has received funding from the European Union under Grant Agreement number INEA/CEF/ICT/A2020/2394296. This website reflects the views only of the independent Consortium, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.
Copyright © EDMO BELUX
Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.
EDMO BELUX is a cross-community, multilingual collaboration between Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Mediawijs, Média Animation, EU DisinfoLab, Agence France-Presse, RTBF, RTL Luxembourg and Athens Technology Center.