Institutional Toolkit to Counter Fake News and Disinformation in the EU: Challenges and Achievements
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31861/mediaforum.2022.10.107-122Keywords:
European Union, disinformation, fake news, social media, media education, StratCom, SOMA, EDMOAbstract
The body of the article goes on to discuss the problem of the European Union’s leading institutions’ efficiency in combating fake news and disinformation, which has appeared to be a major threat to democracy in a modern world. The author’s focus revolves around the problem concerning the EU establishing a regulatory framework as well as an efficient institu-tional toolkit aimed at identifying, refuting, countering fake news and disinformation as well as media education development. In particular, there was the rise and the rise of the Strategic Communications Department (StratCom) and its working groups, the EU Hybrid Fusion Cell as a structural unit of the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre within the Framework of the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the research institution – the European Centre for Countering Hybrid Threats were established.
Noteworthy, to improve the efficiency of information exchange in the EU, EEAS has launched the Rapid Alert System to ensure joint awareness of the situation related to the spread of disinformation in EU member states as well as the development of common responses, however, due to the lack of trust between EU members, the System is not actively used by all of them.
The next crucial steps of combating disinformation and misinformation through media were two projects efficaciously launched by the European Commission, namely SOMA (Social Observatory for Disinformation and Social Media Analysis) started up in 2018 and SOMA (Social Observatory for Disinformation and Social Media Analysis) in 2020, respectively. The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) was set up as a hub for fact-checkers to jointly fight fake news and disinformation. The author
emphasises that despite the fact that EDMO was supposed to replace SOMA, both projects are equally efficient and successful. Furthermore, despite the rise of high-profile EDMO, stakeholders, in particular fact-checkers and media literacy experts still hold a significant sway, which resulted in its failure in achieving their ambitions to finally tackle the spread of misinformation and fake news.
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