European Digital Media Observatory Ireland Hub forms part of a European network that will improve public awareness of disinformation campaigns.

A new hub aimed at strengthening the detection and analysis of disinformation campaigns in Ireland, improving public awareness, and designing effective responses was launched today.

The new Irish hub forms part of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) and aims to build resilience by working with stakeholders across the policy, media, research, and civil society sectors. 

Cutting edge AI technologies

Based at Dublin City University (DCU), the EDMO Ireland Hub brings together a number of internationally recognised partners including social science expertise in disinformation and media literacy (Dublin City University); award-winning technological resources for detecting content and predicting virality (NewsWhip); cutting edge AI technologies for analysing disinformation and supporting fact-checkers (University of Sheffield); and an experienced fact-checking team from Ireland’s online news publisher The Journal. 

Dr Eileen Culloty, coordinator of the project, said: “The hub aims to maximise the great work already being done to counter disinformation in Ireland while providing a means to collaborate with partners across Europe.

"The value of that is evident now amid the Russian war on Ukraine. EDMO has published a regularly updated list of fact-checks about the war and established a taskforce to coordinate responses.”

Dr Culloty is deputy director of the FuJo Institute and a funded investigator at the SFI ADAPT Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology.

Whole-of-society response

Disinformation is a complex problem that needs a whole-of-society response. According to Deloitte Ireland’s latest Digital Consumer Trends report on digital usage and entertainment:

  • 57% of people in Ireland struggle to tell the difference between real news and fake news;

  • 85% feel that fake news is a major problem today, with 74% relying on multiple sources for news and information;

  • 42% of people in Ireland stopped using at least one social media platform, either permanently or temporarily, in the last year, with 21% doing so because it didn’t make them feel good about themselves and 5% doing so because they were being harassed or bullied. 

The hub’s core activities will be supported by an extensive network of stakeholders who are committed to collaborating on countering disinformation, promoting media literacy, and supporting quality journalism.

Dervilla Mullan, chief product officer of NewsWhip, said: “We’re thrilled to be applying our technology and expertise to this great initiative from EDMO, and to be able to bring our experience from working with academia and NGOs around the world to this partnership. Our real-time monitoring of web and social content, coupled with the specialist expertise of the other partners, will shed much needed light on this critical societal issue.”

Kalina Bontcheva, professor of text analysis in the Natural Language Processing Research Group at the University of Sheffield, said: “Working closely with the social scientists and fact-checkers in the Irish EDMO Hub we will be enhancing our AI technologies for disinformation analysis to better handle the cultural, linguistic, and geopolitical specificities of disinformation in Ireland.”