European Digital Media Observatory - EDMO

The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) serves as a hub for a cross-border and multidisciplinary community of independent fact-checkers, academic researchers and other relevant stakeholders to collaborate with each other. It encourages them to actively link with media organisations, media literacy experts, and provide support to policy makers. This helps to coordinate actions in the fight against disinformation.

The activities of EDMO are based on 5 strands:

1. Mapping fact-checking organisations in Europe and supporting them by fostering joint and cross-border activities and dedicated training modules.
2. Mapping, supporting and coordinating research activities on disinformation at European level, including the creation and regular update of a global repository of peer-reviewed scientific articles on disinformation.
3. Building a public portal providing media practitioners, teachers and citizens with information and materials aimed at increasing awareness, building resilience to online disinformation and supporting media literacy campaigns.
4. Design of a framework to ensure secure and privacy-protected access to platforms’ data for academic researchers working to better understand disinformation.
5. Support to public authorities in the monitoring of the policies put in place by online platforms to limit the spread and the impact of disinformation.

EDMO built its main features in 2 phases. The first phase focused on the deployment of a core service infrastructure and will define the governance rules of the Observatory. The second established EDMO national and transnational digital media research hubs across the whole EU. You can read further details on EDMO website.

Governance

EDMO is managed by a consortium led by the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. The consortium includes Athens Technology Center from Greece, Aahrus University from Denmark, and the fact-checking organisation Pagella Politica from Italy.

EDMO has a governance structure completely independent from public authorities, including the European Commission. The governance structure is made up of an advisory board in charge of defining the functioning rules and the strategy of the Observatory and an executive board responsible for implementing the contract in consultation with the advisory board.

Background

The creation of the Observatory was one of the elements in the Commission’s detailed action plan against disinformation, published in December 2018. The plan aims to reinforce capabilities and strengthen cooperation between Member States and the EU in 4 key areas:

1. improving detection
2. coordinating responses
3. working with online platforms and industry
4. raising awareness and empowering citizens to respond to disinformation online

Since 2019, the Commission has allocated funding in several phases to support EDMO and its network of 15 hubs, which extend across the entire EU and beyond.

EDMO Central

• The EDMO central platform was initially financed through procurement under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), with €2.5 million.
• In 2022, EDMO central was refinanced via procurement under the Digital Europe Programme (DEP) with €4 million.
• EDMO central will be refinanced via procurement under the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) 2025 Work Programme, with approximately €2.5 million.

EDMO Hubs

• The first set of 8 national and regional hubs was financed via CEF grants amounting to €11 million.
• An additional 6 hubs were financed through DIGITAL grants, with a total of €8 million.
• The first 8 hubs were further refinanced through DIGITAL grants in 2023, receiving €10 million.
• The other 6 existing EDMO hubs, whose current funding contracts run until 2025, will continue their work. These hubs were selected through a call for proposals and will receive approximately €8.8 million in funding through DIGITAL grants.
• In addition to those, F.A.C.T (new EDMO hub) has been established to support Ukraine and Moldova, among others, in fighting disinformation. This brings the total hubs to 15.