EDMO– European Digital Media Observatory

EDMO is an EU-funded project that acts as a hub for a cross-border, multidisciplinary community of independent fact-checkers, academic researchers, and other stakeholders working against disinformation, connecting them with media organisations, media literacy experts, and policymakers. It has been active since 2020.

Europe MediaLab was fully involved in EDMO as one of the partners in the consortium leading this project. It was notably a member of the management committee and was responsible for one of the tasks to be carried out: Cooperation with third-party organisations. This task aimed to provide horizontal support to the other tasks, most notably governance (and strategy, including diversification of funding), policy activities, outreach and communication. 

A few key things about how it works:

STRUCTURE

Beyond the central platform, EDMO runs a network of 15 national or multinational hubs covering around 30 European countries — all EU member states plus Norway, Moldova, and Ukraine. Altogether it supports a community of over 100 organisations.

GOVERNANCE

EDMO’s governance structure is deliberately independent from public authorities, including the European Commission itself — a design choice meant to keep the fact-checking credible despite the EU funding.

TASK FORCES

For example: Ukraine issuing weekly disinformation briefs, and the EU elections in 2024, producing risk assessments across 14 hubs. Role of EUROPE MEDIALAB in EDMO (2022-2024)

EDMO Hubs