To understand the changes in the field of dis/misinformation over the last several years, IRI's Beacon Project launched a survey to identify organizations and initiatives active in this field, and better understand the needs, challenges, and gaps of this diverse community.

Parliamentary elections took place in Romania on 6 December 2020. The Bucharest-based Global Focus Center, in cooperation with IRI’s Beacon Project, monitored online and social media to examine the prevalence of toxic narratives in the political discourse in the election period. Using the Pulsar media monitoring tool, researchers followed dozens of outlets as well as social media pages of prominent political players over the course of several weeks.

This case study is based on results of media monitoring conducted by IRI’s Beacon Project between September 1 and November 31, 2018, during which Czech and Slovak media produced 1,391 articles about migration. This media monitoring sought to gain an understanding of which migration narratives are disseminated, capture the dynamics of the identified narratives and understand the susceptibility to certain narratives by various demographic groups.

The so-called ‘yellow vest’ protests against rising fuel prices and a planned fuel tax in France, which started on November 17, 2018, not only took France by storm but also resonated in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.  The yellow vests – high-visibility jackets, which French protesters adopted as a symbol –   gradually spread into other countries a symbol of anti-Western agenda and anti-establishment.

We are in the era of Web 2.0, where everybody can easily spread and promote their own messages and, via social networks and other communication channels, reach a significant number of people. Despite the many positives technological progress has brought, problems with information overload have emerged as well. When it comes to health care and the way the public gets its information the Internet has become one of the first sources people resort to.