“The results of Russian propaganda”, Sliz: National conflicts came to the fore in the European elections

The president of the Polish non-governmental organization “Pravda”, Jakub Sliz, tells The Geopost that in the European elections held in June, national conflicts have come to the fore, which may be the result of polarizing Russian propaganda.

Sliz talks about ways to verify information and points to the news control database, in which they have collected about 2,500 articles.

Cooperation between journalists and fact-checkers in the Balkans, according to him, is the best way to fight disinformation and fake news.

Full interview:

The Geopost: It’s very impressive what you’ve done with your database. Can you tell us little bit about the fact-checking database?

Sliz: The “Elections24.Check” is the first of its type repository for Fact-Checks coming from European fact-checking organizations. We collected over 2,500 articles, collected alongside metadata that helps to first of all analyze disinformation narratives from around Europe and secondly it helps fact-checkers in their day-to-day to quickly fact-check different information as well as to perform things such as reverse image search or understand the disinformation landscape in general. So, it’s the first of its kind European project which collects this kind of articles.

The Geopost: In which countries have you seen more Russian interferences in the election process?

Sliz: To be honest, I think it’s okay and surprising. We did not see a lot of interference in terms of Russian disinformation or in European countries. What we saw is mostly national conflicts, which might be a result of other actions, polarizing Russian propaganda, etc. But to be honest, we did not see a straight, very clear information coming from Russia, or Russian propaganda, or Kremlin propaganda, to be more precise.

So mostly national and domestic issues, such as migrants, high food prices, electricity, etc. And of course, the European Green Deal, which was a big thing for many European countries, which led to protests in France, in Poland. So that was as well a big thing.

The Geopost: Which methodology do you use in your projects?

Sliz: We focus on a narrative approach. So, our idea is to collect the different claims, the things that fact checkers are verifying around Europe, then apply artificial intelligence to group and cluster these claims in order to create a unique set of claims that we call narratives.

They’re automatically machine generated, so it helps in the speed of analyzing the content. In terms of methodology, we also try to make sure that the data quality that we ingest into the platform is high. So that’s why part of my job is also moderating the articles that are inside, but also we train fact-checkers who join the program how to correctly describe different metadata in the project, so currently, that’s our methodology.

Interesting thing is that the whole project was very easy for us to develop using the existing tools such as GPT models, develop this kind of things, thanks to prompt engineering and different techniques, so it was not a very expensive project and we were able to achieve pretty good results in terms of narrative analysis.

The Geopost: What is your message for journalists and fact-checkers around the Balkans, because there are a lot of disinformation and false news?

Sliz: First thing is collaboration, collaboration is key and the project which I participate in is a proof for that. So whatever it can be, whether it’s sharing articles that might be interesting for your colleagues, it’s a good way and it can be helpful. Second thing is making sure that you preserve all of the evidence, so whenever, not only in your fact checks or articles that you preserve the sources, but also preserves using archiving tools different claims because later on different stages of your organization growth and as well collaboration you will have a proof and you can make people who are spreading fake news accountable so that’s the second thing and the last thing I would say that, you know there is a, and this is what we can see in “Elections 24 check” project is that it’s not only about verifying fake news, but it also what is important is sharing true news so it also like highlights the need for quality journalism. So, a lot of fact-checking organizations that participate in the “Election 24 Check” Project not only fact-check but also publish something we call pre-banks which is information about something that might come and we saw a big increase in pre-banks so that’s interesting and I highly recommend you to use this and create this type of articles.

/The Geopost