Athens Technology Center (ATC) joins the Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory of Digital Media, as a member of a 12-partnering organizations consortium. Τhis initiative, known as BROD hub, aims to establish a regional hub in Bulgaria and Romania, to involve multiple stakeholders and disciplines in the fight against disinformation and provide top-tier knowledge, and customized multilingual resources, alongside swift detection and analysis of disinformation campaigns. Additionally, it will support the work of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO).
All these 12 organizations, coordinated by the GATE Institute, will be working together to enhance the capabilities of professionals to identify disinformation, while also promoting media literacy among citizens. The project’s team plans to provide locally-tailored, multilingual resources for analyzing disinformation campaigns, conducting media literacy activities, fact-checking, and researching media and disinformation.
Athens Technology Center (ATC) is very proud to be part of this effort, by providing specialized fact-checking tools for the detection and analysis of misinformation incidents, such as Truly Media, a platform supporting the analysis and verification of digital content as it is distributed online, and Truthnest, a Twitter analytics tool that allows the in-depth profiling of active Twitter accounts. ATC will also proceed with localizing these tools into Romanian and Bulgarian and will integrate additional verification functionalities that are currently under development.
About the kick-off meeting
The partners from Vitosha Research EOOD (Bulgaria) hosted the two-day meeting, at the end of January 2023 in Sofia, where the partnering organizations presented their expertise and their contribution to the project.
“This project is extremely important for us, as it confirms the role of the Institute as the main driver in the region for introducing innovations. We stand firmly behind the cause of providing professionals with better tools to detect disinformation and increase citizens’ media literacy. Our commitment stems from the social significance of this topic,” said the Director of GATE, Prof. Silvia Ilieva.
“For the first time, a structure is starting to be built in which anyone who has an interest in the topic of disinformation can join. These are media, academic institutions and technology companies, and people involved in media and information literacy education. The goal is to create a network for detecting and countering disinformation,” said Assoc. Prof. Milena Dobreva, Head of Research at BROD.
If you’re interested in discovering more about the BROD partners’ dedication to combating disinformation and want to be among the first to hear about the project’s national and European contributions, then make sure to follow the consortium’s Twitter and LinkedIn channels.
