EDMO Belux is a multilingual cross-country community collaboration between Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles, Mediawijs, EU Disinfolab, Agence France-Presse, RTL Luxembourg, RTBF and Athens Technology Center.

Financed by the European Union, it aims to tackle disinformation through a “rapid response network” providing regular analysis, a “knowledge hub” and “a network of journalists, academics and experts” to establish a unified and collective front against falsehoods being shared online in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Although it concedes that it is impossible to fact-check all information available online, the arbiter will use partnerships AFP (Agence France Presse), RTL Luxembourg and RTBF to provide daily fact-checks in five languages including English as well as French, Luxembourgish, German and Dutch. They will be published on EDMO BELUX website.

In May 2021 The European Commission announced it was using €11m of it’s public funds to finance and create eight selected national hubs to form the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) network spanning across several countries: Ireland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, as well as Norway.

The EDMO network has the power and capability to “organise media literacy activities at national or multinational level”, “Provide support to national authorities for the monitoring of online platforms” and “Detect and analyse disinformation campaigns, as well as producing content to support mainstream and local media.”

want to be a repository of knowledge, gathering daily fact-checks, academic studies, media literacy material and more relevant content.

EDMO BELUX is also launching social media channels on Twitter and LinkedIn.

And in the coming months, the information community wishes to publish 800 fact-checks in all five languages and conduct OSINT (open-source intelligence) investigations on disinformation campaigns, as well as provide annual assessments of the effectiveness of platform responses to disinformation.

There is a precedent. In summer 2019 the BBC convened a “Trusted News Summit”, bringing together senior figures from major global technology firms and publishing houses to create The Trusted News Initiative (TNI). The industry collaboration of major news and global tech organisations works together to stop the spread of disinformation, particularly around moments it labels as “of jeopardy,” such as elections.

The TNI share an early warning system of rapid alerts to combat the spread of disinformation.

The partners currently within the TNI are: AFP; BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU),Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, Microsoft , Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, The Wall Street Journal.