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Joanna Krawczyk, Member of the Management Committee at the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF), talks about the importance of supporting fact-checking and media literacy to combat disinformation, which can disrupt democratic processes and societal stability. EMIF focuses on funding diverse, collaborative projects across Europe to strengthen these efforts.

EMIF focuses on fact-checking and media literacy initiatives. Why do you think it is important to support such initiatives in Europe?

Krawczyk: We do pay special attention to fact-checking and media literacy in Europe, and I believe that these two areas are especially crucial due to the very pervasive nature of disinformation in general. Disinformation can, and does, impact public opinion. It can disrupt democratic processes and, in turn, it can undermine societal stability. We have many geopolitical crises right now; the invasion of Russia in Ukraine; the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza; and we also have a full cycle of elections across the world. With this kind of accumulation of crucial geopolitical moments, there is an urgent need to empower citizens with the skills to read and evaluate information critically.

We believe in EMIF that the right to be informed is a human right, and being able to evaluate information, to be critical towards information that surrounds us, is also one of the skills that adds to being able to execute this human right. So, yes, fact-checking and media literacy are the areas providing us with skills that are crucial in managing the complexities of our geopolitical surroundings and circumstances.

On which regions do you focus? What kind of organisations do you support?

Krawczyk: As the very name of our fund suggests, we are a European pooled fund, which means that we have a regional focus, we do focus on European Union and EFTA [European Free Trade Association] countries and the UK. But we also extend the scope of our activities towards other countries, in the sense that we support organisations that are based in eligible European countries; however, in their projects, the scope of analysing or countering disinformation is broader. This is important to understand that we do not focus just on disinformation happening only here in Europe; we look at it on a wider scale, since disinformation disregards any geographical borders.

When it comes to the type of organisations we are supporting, they are really diverse. We support, first and foremost, independent fact-checking organisations and media literacy groups, mostly NGOs. Because we also fund research, so obviously we support academic institutions and research-focused entities. We also support independent quality media outlets.

It is important for us to value collaboration: the majority, if not all, of our funded projects are collaborative projects of at least two entities. And then, they are also very often cross-border. It is our preference to make sure that the project supported by us is addressing the challenges of not only one community, and also that the solutions designed and implemented in the project are the result of different approaches presented by different organisations. This produces an added value of joint work of different organisations from different backgrounds and with varied experiences. In short, EMIF is a European fund funding different types of independent entities.

What does the support look like? Do you provide grants, do you offer training, knowledge-sharing among grantees, etc.?

Krawczyk: In general, we were designed as a grant-making mechanism, which means that we provide financial support for projects focused on fact-checking, media literacy, and disinformation research. Since we began our operations, we have approved grants up to almost €12.5 million, and we have funded 87 projects in 26 countries. The scale of our grant-making is quite substantial on the background of European media and information funding. We believe this, and our evaluations prove we do have a big impact on the disinformation countering field. And our support is something that organisations active in this field are looking forward to.

Grant-making is the core of our activities. However, we have a few other satellite activities. We do knowledge-sharing in the form of conventions organised twice a year: EMIF conferences, usually one in the autumn and one in late spring or summer. Actually, there’s going to be one in Lisbon on the 15th and 16th of July [2024]. These are the conventions to which we’re inviting our current and past grantees, so that they can exchange knowledge and experiences and share good practices. So, we do invest in these networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities.

And, of course, EMIF is active in its expert role and we participate in different types of conferences, workshops, and seminars, speaking about our experience in disinformation countering activities. But, and this is the least visible part of our work, we also support research. We work very closely with the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, and we support academic courses and research done there by young researchers and students. The array of our activities is vast, with grant-making at the centre of it, but we want to be, and we are, active in other areas as well.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from this programme?

Krawczyk: It is something we have been discussing a lot in the previous year: global threats and more local conflicts, the pandemic, elections disruption – all the turmoil we have witnessed and experienced in the last years has showed us that the biggest challenge that we had to face was the need for rapid responses to very quickly developing or changing circumstances. It is all about the ability to react swiftly to approaching change, challenge, or threat.

We learned, and we did it the hard way, that what is really needed in funds like ours is flexibility and adaptability in responding to this fast-evolving nature of disinformation. Thus, last year, we adjusted our funding strategies for building project support, adding rapid response grant-making to address these emerging threats as well as possible. We want to ensure that the initiatives that we fund stay relevant and effective in responding to these abrupt changes in our reality.

Our revised approach allows us now for a swift mobilisation of funding and targeted interventions during critical periods, such as election cycles and some geopolitical crises.

In general, how do you assess the success of your programme? What do you deem as the biggest success story?

Krawczyk: After funding over 80 different disinformation-countering projects, it’s difficult to name just one success story. There are plenty. We generally believe that it is the big impact the projects funded by EMIF make on their communities and broader society that is our biggest success story. And every success story of our grantees is a success story of EMIF.

Of course, I have my favourite projects. There is, for example, the FRAME project, which is very timely because it has developed an AI tool transcribing and fact-checking political statements in real-time, a resource that is acutely important and needed today amidst this election cycle. There is also an amazing project from Poland that is taking emotions as the departure point for working with youth in recognising disinformation. This is a very interesting approach, quite new, I suppose, to turn to the emotional side of a human being when faced with disinformation.

And then there are also projects whose deliverables have a broader political impact. One of them is Information Laundromat, which was designed and implemented by the Alliance for Securing Democracy: their tool detecting banned Russian propaganda across hundreds of websites has been used by many think tanks, and the results of the Laundromat activity have very broadly discussed, for example, in the American Congress, and are of interest to Polish policy-makers as well.

Our impact is visible and growing, but again, I want to highlight that EMIF’s impact and our success story is always the success story of our grantees.

Do you have any special advice for organisations that have not funded journalism yet, but are thinking about doing so?

Krawczyk: The first thing I would say: don’t be afraid of it. Funding journalism, funding quality media, funding organisations that are making sure that our societies are well informed and immune to propaganda and disinformation, are all really the key to sustaining democracy, across our countries and continents. I firmly believe that this is one of our main responsibilities as citizens, but also as funders, to make sure that members of our communities well understand the disinformation processes that are happening around them, and they are equipped with tools and skilled enough to be able to respond to them adequately.

There is a great opportunity for new funders, for organisations that are new to funding journalism, to join dedicated funds like EMIF. When I analyse the philanthropic scene of Europe, I see how many shared goals and shared values EMIF has with organisations that, at first sight, have not got much in common with journalism. They do care about backsliding of democracy, equality, justice or environmental issues, and these are the areas where disinformation and propaganda are often very active; these issues are also addressed by EMIF-supporting projects countering disinformation in their fields. We believe that by supporting quality journalism and projects that are fighting disinformation, malign foreign interference and propaganda spreading, such organisations will also support their own goals.

In my view, we haven’t explored the whole potential of cross-cutting goals of EMIF and philanthropic organisations, multilaterals, corporates and government funding. The time to start joining forces is now.