IBERIFIER is an Iberian hub that aims to tackle disinformation in Spain and Portugal by bringing together aconsortium of 23 partners, composed of 12 universities, 5 independent fact-checking organisations and publicly-owned news agencies, and 6 leading institutions on strategic analysis, computer and data science, and mediaresearch. With the support of public authorities of both countries, relevant media organisations, several scientific andprofessional associations, as well as some other stakeholders, the activities of this Action comprise: (1) scientificresearch and analysis for the security and development of the Iberian digital media ecosystem; (2) fact-checking inthree languages (Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan); (3) computer and data research aimed at developing systemsfor early detection of disinformation; (4) strategic analyses about the impacts of disinformation on areas such aspolitics, economy, social and security issues, science and technology, and the media industry; and (5) developmentof media literacy, through a set of activities targeted mainly to young people, journalists and citizens in general.Although the consortium focuses its activities on Spain and Portugal, its impacts are expected to reach far beyondthese two countries, thus contributing to the overall strategy and goals of the European Digital Media Observatory.Thanks to the international dimension of some of the consortium partners, as well as the set of scientific,communication and dissemination activities planned, IBERIFIER aims to have impact in the socio-cultural andlinguistic area that comprises all the Iberian-American region as well as some other countries in Africa and Asia,where Spanish and Portuguese languages are spoken by more than 600 million people, spread over 21 Spanish-speaking and 9 Portuguese-speaking countries.

The EUMEPLAT project aims at analyzing the role of media platforms in fostering or dismantling European identity. The assumption we will draw on is that European dimension has rarely been dominant in media history. In most cases – i.e., movie – market shares are mainly divided among national productions and importations from the most influential country. In broadcasting both regional and national patterns emerge, with properly European exchanges being the exception more than the rule. Web platforms are usually owned by US companies, with a new threat appearing in our media landscape. We will focus on the “platformization” process, as the rise of new closed Web architectures, so as to inquire its positive and negative externalities, functional and dis-functional consequences. Positive externalities are beneficial to society at large, in a way that explains the overall ambition of the project. Detecting the insurgence of negative effects is a fundamental duty for scholars and policy-makers, as externalities of both kinds tend to reinforce themselves, giving rise to positive loop feedbacks and critical vicious circles. Negative externalities include misinformation, toxic debate, exclusion of independent voices; positive externalities encompass European co-productions, or practices able to bring people out of the information bubble. For this purpose, we will run a multidisciplinary analysis of platformization in three fields: news, video sharing, media representations, with the final goal to offer a theoretical synthesis. The research question is whether or not new platforms – YouTube, Netflix, NewsFeed - are making European culture more European, based on indicators related to production, consumption and representation. Patterns will be detected by comparing national, regional and European and level. Advanced methods will be applied for data analysis, so as to provide guidelines for decision-makers (i.e., fake news prevention; best practices in co-productions).

The project is the extension of the Erasmus+ KA2 project NEWSREEL - New Skills for the Next Generation of Journalists. The primary goal of NEWSREEL2 - New Teaching Fields for the Next Generation of Journalists is to improve such skills of a new generation of European journalists that are connected to the use of digital communication opportunities in a creative and responsible way for enhancing social benefits of the digital era. Creative and responsible use of digital tools is an indispensable ability of journalists. They should remain reliable and trustworthy sources of news in the digital noise to counterpoint the unverified information that affects the raw emotions and temper of the audience. To achieve these objectives, in the framework of NEWSREEL2, we will develop innovative teaching methods and materials for media and journalism students on the fields of:Storytelling in social media in order to students learn how to present journalistic contents on social media networks;Graphic journalism to get to know the basic tools and subgenres of comics journalism;Improving democratic sensibility to be aware their social role and responsibility in a democratic society of the digital age;Covering migration to improve their research and reporting skills, and understanding migration in a global context;Foreign coverage to be able to contribute to a more balanced coverage of international topics;Journalism for voice-activated assistants and devices to learn how to use them and see the potential that they can bring to newsrooms;AI and journalism, robot journalism and algorithms to know how it can be used, and see clearly its potential and threats;Verifying and analysing fake news to be able to identify information and opinion going viral and to verify information with the help of suitable tools and softwares;Debunking disinformation to get solid knowledge regarding the mechanisms used for debunking fake news and disinformation.

The Covid Check project aims to help optimize official communication and clarify the main issues of the Portuguese about the pandemic, through the creation of a public knowledge network that will be available through a specific website. In this way it can contribute to the optimization of the effective results of communication protocols between health entities and their stakeholders, at internal level, and journalists and citizens, at external level. The expected results are: the promotion of effective and clear messages among the population; contribute to the identification of disinformation that may be harmful to public health; and encourage society to search for reliable sources. To achieve this: entities must improve their communication based on research results; the media must create more focused messages; citizens must understand the practices and behaviours desired to resolve the pandemic. The project is part of the research on desinformation on course in the MediaLab_Iscte.

The main focus of the project is to monitor propaganda and disinformation activities on online social media networks with the objectives of mobilisation, polarisation and political destabilisation in Portugal, regardless of the origin of these activities. Throughout the project period, which corresponds to a moment of great political activity in Portugal, marked by three elections (European, Regional - Madeira and Legislative), an attempt was made to identify and analyse organised movements, political party’s related or not, of propaganda and disinformation with the aim of influencing the informed participation of citizens in the elections. Social network analysis methodologies and tools (i.e. Crimson Hexagon, Netvizz, Google Trends, etc.) will be used to identify, transversally and longitudinally, messages and information dissemination networks with malicious objectives and their international relationships, with special attention to the relations between populist movements and their sharing of messages of misinformation ("fake news"). The final objective is to identify messages, protagonists and channels of disinformation that seek to influence political discourse through the main public online social media networks (Facebook, Twitter and Youtube). The project also aims to contribute to the warning and prevention of the dissemination of malicious propaganda, collaborating with journalistic projects to develop and disseminate the results of research.  Regarding WhatsApp, as it involves the integration of public access groups via an access link, it is expected to replicate the methodology used by Resende et al (2019) that addressed the same phenomenon in Brazilian elections. The anonymization of the personal data of the participants of the groups (phone number, photo and other information associated with the profile) will be made in the collection process, thus not integrating the analysis of the results. This anonymisation of the data in the collection process...

The main focus of the European Media Coach project is the improvement of media literacy levels among young people through the development of large pool of media literate professionals working with youth in schools, youth centers and in non-formal contexts like libraries and museums. Instead of attempting the development of a pilot experimentation project, the European Media Coach project proposes the scaling up of a recognized and proven innovation in the field of media literacy. more specifically, the European Media Coach project aims at the replication of a practice in the field of media literacy that has demonstrable results with qualitative and quantitative evidence of impact; that of the Dutch national media coach program. Number of years the Dutch media coach training initiative has successfully achieved the goal of improving media literacy among children, young people and parents by training youth professionals, notably, teachers, librarians, youth workers, government officials and other societal professionals and by giving them the opportunity to study the possibilities and challenges of these new media and new literacies.

Journalists have an essential role in the new media landscape as a pillar of credible and contextualized information. Being in competition with several alternative forms of news, non-professional or even deliberately manipulated news, professional journalism should be empowered by new competencies and skills. Opportunities enabled by digital technologies, such as processing, analysing and visualising large amounts of data, as well as multi-sectoral and digital cross-border co-operations, open new fields of journalistic activities, and new ways to speak about public issues. However, this environment also entails technical and economic risks, and demands expertise in IT security, as well as the development of business models and strategies from journalists and media companies. Journalists face several ethical challenges that should be handled to meet their social responsibilities. Fake news and hate speech have become major issues in the public sphere, as have whistleblowing and activism. By improving skills of a new generation of European journalists, NEWSREEL will contribute to the strengthening of the common European democratic public sphere. It will do so by improving collaborative and cross-border journalism that is able to elaborate and make tangible the huge amount of available data, and which is based on a predictable business strategy and a firm ethical foundation. The main goal of the project is developing e-learning materials connected to four fields: data journalism, new business models, collaborative journalism and ethical challenges. All educational materials produced by the project will be made openly and freely accessible through open licenses via the project’s website.

Executives worldwide want their organisations to be innovative. And, of course, news media firms always have been. Innovation – the process of transforming creative ideas into outputs with impact – has, and continues to be, the fuel that drives newsroom engines at every organisation. But wide-ranging changes compel us to rethink how we go about innovation in every part of our enterprises – across editorial, commercial, technology and operations. We also need to identify and develop new opportunities to sustain and grow our businesses.   Decisions about what to innovate and how to go about it fall largely to the company’s leadership, so the Innovation Research Group survey decision-makers worldwide in 11 languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. On an yearly basis, the Group produces and publishes an international report and several academic papers.   The survey’s questions look at four areas:   The profile of respondents, including the nature and activities of their firm; Current revenue streams, financial performance during the past book year, and the anticipation of future revenue sources; Specific priorities for change and investment in the next year and in the medium term (3-5 years); and How leaders experience change and risk.

The main goal of the survey is to analize the working conditions of the portuguese and foreign journalists working in Portugal.It is also an objective to know their education background and professional profile.The survey also wants to identify the main constrains and challenges that journalism professionals face in the current media market in Portugal.The target of this survey is all journalists working in Portugal.

The European Journalism Observatory is an ongoing project designed to build bridges that links journalism cultures across Europe and the US, facilitating collaboration between media researchers and practitioners. Making media research results accessible to larger audiences by studying “best practices” in journalism and analyzing trends in the media industry is a major goal of the European Journalism Observatory (EJO http://en.ejo.ch ), which also seeks to contribute to improving the quality of journalism, better understanding of the media and freedom of the press. EJO's work addresses the needs of journalists and media managers at the same time, serving as a resource for those interested in media developments to narrow the gap between academia and the media professional. The European Observatory for Journalism was established in spring 2004 as a non-profit institute at the Italian Università della Svizzera, and Portugal has joined the project since 2014. EJO is a developing network with the collaboration of universities and institutes from 13 countries. This project also works together on various smaller projects that emerge over time. As an example, projects were undertaken to analyze the news approach to migrant issues in Europe, or the approaches to Brexit or elections that elected Donald Trump in the USA.