On Monday, November 18, 2024, secretary general of the Nordic Council of Ministers, Karen Ellemann, opened the NORDIS conference “Disinformation in a year of elections”.
Researchers and experts shared their insights and experiences on disinformation at Nordic, European, and international levels. Here, you can watch or rewatch presentations from the individual speakers.
The conference placed particular emphasis on how disinformation and conspiracy theories shaped both the 2024 European Parliament election and the recently concluded U.S. presidential election.
It also marked the continuation of the Nordic initiative, the Nordic Observatory for Digital Media and Information Disorder (NORDIS), a cross-disciplinary project collaboration involving universities, media, and tech companies in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The project is part of the EU Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) and funded by the EU:
Through fact-checking, research into disinformation, and the development of educational materials on media literacy, NORDIS aims to identify and analyze the most pressing sources and causes of information disorder in the Nordic region. The overarching goal is to strengthen the Nordic defenses against disinformation.
The NORDIS team consists of Faktisk.no (Norway), the University of Bergen (Norway), Källkritikbyrån (Sweden), TjekDet (Denmark), Avoin Yhteiskunta Ry (Finland), Factiverse (Norway), and Linnaeus University (Sweden).
Among the conference speakers was Line Nybro Petersen, associate professor of media studies at the University of Copenhagen, who spoke on extremism and conspiracy theories leading up to the U.S.: election:
Tobias Bornakke, Partner at Analyse & Tal and Chair of the Nordic Think Tank for Tech and Democracy, presented findings from a project monitoring Russian attempts to influence the 2024 European Parliament election:
Tommaso Canetta, deputy director of the Italian media outlet Pagella Politica/Facta News and coordinator of European fact-checking activities for EDMO, presented results from EDMO’s efforts to combat disinformation during the 2024 European Parliament election:
Morten Langfeldt Dahlback, consortium leader for NORDIS and head of innovation and technology at Faktisk.no, and Gaute Kokkvoll, product manager at Factiverse, concluded the conference by showcasing how NORDIS will tackle the threat of artificial intelligence using AI-powered tools, including a live fact-checking tool developed by Factiverse:
The conference took place at the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX) in Copenhagen, with nearly 200 participants from the Nordic region and beyond, attending either in person or via live stream.