This is the second phase of a project funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose first stage ran between 2023 and 2024 with the participation of fact-checkers from Georgia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia. In this new period, fact-checkers from two additional countries are joining: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
Over two years (until March 2027), the eleven organizations taking part in this second phase will work to identify cross-border disinformation campaigns through the content they receive via their chatbots on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram, as well as content they detect on social media. By monitoring a centralized system that acts as a repository and allows organizations to log disinformation content, track its circulation across different countries, and analyze its evolution and narratives, fact-checkers will be able to tackle these campaigns more effectively.
During the first phase of the project, the participating organizations published three investigations:
- Zelensky and his family spending Western money on luxury goods or squandering war resources: cross-border disinformation campaigns circulating from Georgia to Argentina
- The “Pizzagate” of Zelensky’s wife and other cross-border hoaxes that use women and children to delegitimize Ukraine
- “Western countries attack Russia” while at the same time “withdraw aid from Ukraine”: opposing disinformation campaigns from Europe to Latin America
These investigations were presented at different events in countries such as Spain and Georgia and enabled the organizations to address the wide-ranging and diverse challenges involved in protecting information integrity by promoting greater collaboration among fact-checkers from different countries.
What will Fundación Maldita.es do?
Fundación Maldita.es will coordinate the project, which includes activities such as monitoring disinformation in the centralized system, producing journalistic investigations and other analytical reports on disinformation campaigns and platform compliance, and organizing training sessions on FIMI, TTPs, or public policy. It will also develop, through Botalite, a chatbot for the two organizations in Serbia and another for the organization in Bosnia.
Who is taking part in ATAFIMI?
- Fundación Maldita.es (Spain)
- StopFake (Ukraine)
- Myth Detector (Georgia)
- Delfi (Lithuania)
- Zašto ne (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
- RasKRIKavanje (Serbia)
- FakeNews Tragač (Serbia)
- Chequeado (Argentina)
- Verificado MX (Mexico)
- Cazadores de Fake News (Venezuela)
- La Silla Vacía (Colombia)