Central European Digital Media Observatory 2.0

ongoing

Central Europe is suffering the brunt of disinformation and technological uncertainty, which is reaching unprecedented levels on topics ranging from health to politics to regulation of artificial intelligence. The situation in this geographical region got even worse with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is accompanied with hybrid attacks, in which creation and spreading disinformation plays a prominent role. The aim of the CEDMO 2.0 project is to follow up on the previous activities of the already established and widely recognized CEDMO hub - a multinational, independent, and interdisciplinary hub focused on tackling information disorders in Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia. The unique assets of the CEDMO is not only the potential to build on its previous outcomes, but also accumulated knowledge of local information environments, which will be utilised to strengthen fact-checking, detection and analysis of disinformation, improving public awareness by media literacy campaigns, or monitoring national/EU policies. It involves thirteen experts organisations, involving new partners to increase the hub capacity and strengthen the multidisciplinarity and coverage of digital mediascape in all three national contexts. It is furthermore supported by a large network of government, media, industry and NGO entities as well as experts, which together create a robust and resilient regional community of practice, integrated with EDMO and other regional hubs. Finally, CEDMO aims to significantly contribute to prevention of technologically ever more sophisticated digital disruptions (e.g., deepfakes) as caused by large-scale and targeted disinformation campaigns. That is the reason why AI-based technology gets more sustained attention. It includes utilisation of open-source intelligence (OSINT), forensic and automated journalism, machine learning and pattern recognition in visual propaganda detection, automated fact checking or media literacy tools based on AI.