BROD, a new website to fight disinformation in Bulgaria and Romania, launches with AFP as a partner

BROD is a unique alliance in these two EU countries, which experienced a particularly strong emergence of disinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The project website gathers fact-checking articles produced by partner news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Bulgarian and Romanian, as well as those of the Factual platform, created by the Romanian NGO Funky Citizen, and of the Bulgarian national television BNT, which has just launched a fact-checking service. Dozens of AFP fact-checking articles are already available to the Bulgarian and Romanian public on the site.

The two main academic partners are the GATE Institute of Sofia's Saint Clement University, which is piloting the project, and the National School of Political Science in Bucharest. With the help of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) in Sofia and the Slovak-based think tank Globsec, the researchers will be able to map disinformation in Bulgaria and Romania. Their work will be published regularly on the website.

The site will also host media education tools aimed at the most vulnerable audiences, including the young and old, as well as journalism students. These tools will be the work of the Romanian Centre for Independent Journalism CJI and the Bulgarian training centre NTCenter.

AFP has made the fight against disinformation a major focus of its daily work, said Christine Buhagiar, the international news agency's director for Europe. With this new hub, the agency is helping to complete an extensive network that aims, throughout the EU, to raise awareness among European citizens against the ravages of disinformation.

Like the other hubs in the EDMO network, BROD received funding from the European Union in 2022 to federate its academic, journalistic and educational activities in the fight against disinformation. The development of the site has been entrusted to the company XWiki, which is based in France and Romania. It will be supported by the Greek company ATC for the implementation of the interactions in the EDMO network and ONTOTEXT for the innovation part.

BROD is part of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), an independent coordinating body created in 2020 by the European Commission to bring together digital investigation organisations, scientists and other organisations as part of its strategy to combat digital media.

About AFP

AFP is a leading global news agency, providing 24/7 coverage of world news across all fields. Since 2017, AFP has built up the world's largest digital investigation network, with more than 140 journalists covering 86 countries to date. These specialised journalists are a reference in the fight against disinformation and publish in 26 languages on the factcheck.afp.com website.

As result, AFP was chosen by the European Commission to take part in seven other platforms of EDMO's network that covers 16 countries, in addition to BROD. AFP is also a member of IFCN (International Fact-Checking Networks) and participated in the writing of EFCSN (European Fact- Checking Standards Network)'s Code.

AFP also belongs to Facebook and Instagram's programme aiming to identify misleading information circulating on these social networks.

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LINK:	https://www.afp.com/en/agency/press-releases-newsletter/brod-new-websi...
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