Our four-panel event will kick-off with the testimony of a Ukrainian expert in strategic communications and hybrid threats. It will then move on to examples shared by platforms in their first reports under the new, strengthened EU Code of practice on countering disinformation. The Code is an industry-led tool, which now counts among its signatories major online platforms, emerging and specialised platforms, players in the advertising industry, fact-checkers, research and civil society organisations. These actors commit to take action in several domains, such as: demonetising the dissemination of disinformation; ensuring the transparency of political advertising; empowering users; enhancing cooperation with fact-checkers; and providing researchers with better access to data.

During the second session, EU and UK experts will share their respective experience and best practices, including in addressing foreign information manipulation and interference in the context of the war in Ukraine. The European Union has focused on this threat since 2015 and has along the way worked in conjunction with like-minded partners, including the UK. One example of such bilateral cooperation has been the international support for the UK after the attempted poisoning of Sergey Skripal in Salisbury in 2018. Following Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement in the British Parliament, saying that it was “highly likely” that Russia was responsible, more than 20 countries joined Britain in blaming Russia for the attack and expelled more than 120 Russian diplomats to retaliate. The Council’s conclusions in the aftermath of the Salisbury attack highlighted in particular the need to strengthen the resilience of the EU against Russian threats, including hybrid threats such as Russian disinformation campaigns. One example of countering Russian information manipulation has been the EU vs Disinfo website. It raises awareness about pro-Kremlin propaganda and debunks the most aggressive myths peddled by Russia.

The third panel will focus on audiences and on practitioners’ responses. We will hear from the Reuters Institute for the study of journalism about their research how people get exposed to disinformation and analysis to what extent their exposure to quality journalism makes them more resilient to false narratives. During this session, we also expect to hear from researchers from big platforms about the changing tactics of the perpetrators of disinformation, which they observe in internal empirical data. This panel will discuss ways to disrupt the activity of such actors.

Our final panel hosts key international partners from the EU, the UK, Canada and Japan. It will discuss the next steps that the international community could consider to stay ahead of the game and counter foreign information manipulation and interference.

The conference will be live-streamed on the EU Delegation's Facebook.