• Priority Area Boosting Fact-checking Activities in Europe
• Funding Round / Action Types 4th Funding Round – Urgent Actions
• Year 2023, 2024
• Country Bulgaria
• Project Status Ongoing

The project aims to develop a systematic and sustainable strategy to tackle the disinformation in Bulgaria related to critical events. The forthcoming local and probably once again parliamentary elections are expected to nourish the widespread disinformation in the country, putting in local context the big narratives related also to the war in Ukraine – i.e. anti-EU, anti-NATO, anti liberal propaganda.

The project rationale is to fight the disinformation with a model that involves prebunking, debunking and updates on the most sensitive topics which, based on our experience, will be part once again of the disinformation landscape.

The project’ team will search for disinformation in two ways – in the isolated Bulgarian Facebook groups and through international partnerships (the IFCN, Science+) and other fact-checking platforms (EDMO, EU vs Disinfo). This way, the project will be able to address both local disinformation discourses and major narratives popular in Central and Eastern European countries.
For the articles on disinformation about the war in Ukraine and its broader context,Factcheck.bg will continue to translate these articles into Ukrainian and to increase their reach via a partnership with the Ukrainian fact-checker StopFake. StopFake.org will republish Factcheck.bg articles in Ukrainian. It will also provide the team with consultation on Ukrainian topics throughout the whole project cycle.
The target audiences of the project are the media professionals, civil society representatives, experts, academicians working on the topic of disinformation and the ordinary citizens in Bulgaria.