7 projects approved on 31 May with a total funding of €418,635.59 will work on topics including climate change, elections and public health, as well as fact-checking on social media platforms and for radio audiences.

The approved projects will cover multiple linguistic communities and are based in 5 countries: Latvia, Poland, Bulgaria, Portugal, and the UK.

Under “Urgent Actions” the following projects were approved:

“Quick-reaction-Fact-checking on TikTok and popular social media” by Foundation “Counteracting Disinformation” (Poland), addressing the fake content that appears on TikTok and often overlaps with that on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, through creating a specialised team of experts to combat disinformation across all these platforms. 

“FACTUAL | Fact-Checking Climate Changes” by Inevitable and Fundamental, Limited Society (Portugal) will seek to address issues related to misinformation and disinformation regarding matters related to the environment and climate change. It aims to achieve its purpose through fact-checking, as well as through media literacy initiatives, particularly targeting younger audiences. 

“Scaled-up fact-checking before Latvian parliamentary elections in October 2022” by the Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism “Re:Baltica” (Latvia) will monitor social networks and fact check debates before the elections. It will verify the outcomes of the previous promises and examine the track record of the main contenders, distributing the findings in a visually attractive format friendly to social networks. 

“Fighting the hybrid war in Latvia” by JSC Delfi (Latvia) is aimed at reducing the impact of disinformation campaigns by bringing reliable news and information to target audiences in Latvia and Europe, increasing the fact-checking capacity thus contributing to a trustworthy media environment in Europe, reaching new critical audiences (Russian language community and wider Europe). 

Approved “Scale-Up Projects” include: 

“Piloting #Radio-FACT-Checks for a More Trustworthy Media Landscape (#FACT)” by European Institute Foundation (Bulgaria) with its partner who will jointly build capacity of local-level fact-checkers and rigorously produce fact-checked content, supported by new tech tools. Through thematic radio rubrics, diverse audiences – including vulnerable groups – will get engaged in on-air and online conversations on disinformation and malign foreign narratives. 

“Better information for better health – clinical fact-checker” by Full Fact (UK) is adding a health specialist to Full Fact’s fact-checking team to improve the combat against health misinformation in the UK. Over the next year, the new fact-checker will monitor and fact-check claims related to clinical health and inform targeted interventions to counter dangerous claims. 

“Scale-up of fact-checking activity of OKO.Press online portal” by Foundation Centre for Civic Monitoring OKO (Poland) will expand fact-checking activities of OKO.press, an independent Polish civic medium. The project aims at providing the audience with regular weekly publications by implementing new formats: cross-sectional publications and tools for fact-checking. This, along with the development of technological facilities, will support audience development and engagement. 

The ongoing funding round of the Call “Boosting Fact-Checking Activities in Europe” is open until 30 June 2022.