“Stars4Media – Factchecking: Strategy for Eastern European Media Resilience” is a project led by Europe’s MediaLab in consortium partners with I-Europa (Slovakia), Europejskie Media (Poland), Free Media Bulgaria (Belgium) and Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia).

Liga media (Ukraine), MediaIQ (Belarus) , Pavel Grabchikov / Kraina project (Belarus) and Belarusian Investigative Centre (Belarus)  are media third parties in the project.

“Stars4Media – Factchecking” has received a grant by the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF) within the call ‘Supporting Research into Media, Disinformation and Information Literacy Across Europe’.

Background:

Disinformation helped destabilise a number of rational public spheres and is part of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare. Many fact-checking initiatives are trying to counter it, including training, technology and collecting databases. However, the sustainability of these activities and their integration into regular media work has received relatively little attention.

This research project focuses on the financial, organisational and trust sustainability of integrating fact-checking activities into media. Media professionals, researchers and experts in fact-checking from 6 countries will collect data, develop concepts and design models to test them in the sandbox environment.

As application-oriented research, the project aims at turning fact-checking into a sustainable activity for media in Eastern Europe, also in terms of business model, extending from short-term journalism work. Models and recommendations developed in the project could be replicated beyond its focus region, leveraging existing experience, and using proven media and fact-checking networks.
The project helps deepen understanding of under-researched areas such as Central and Eastern Europe as the operational focus is on Ukraine and Belarus – via subcontracting – and three EU countries: Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria. Project outcomes are replicable beyond the focus region.

The expected impact of the project is expected at three levels:

  • Academia & research: Concepts, models, open datasets for deeper understanding of under-researched areas.
  • Media & fact-checking organisations: Applications (models) replicated beyond the CEE region that help the sustainability of media organisations.
  • Donors & supporters: Guidelines for the development of more effective support measures.

Read more here.

The project consortia and the associated partners met on April 19th in Brussels. For more details and the agenda please visit the event page.