Our latest commitments to countering disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe

Google is committed to fighting the spread of misinformation online. We take the task of providing access to high quality, trustworthy, and credible content very seriously. And we're not doing it alone. We continuously adapt our policies, product features and technologies to prevent abuse, as well as openly sharing our technology, supporting fact-checkers and academics globally, testing innovative prebunking campaigns and participating in the strengthened EU Code of Practice on Disinformation.

Today, we are announcing new long-term partnerships we've established across Central and Eastern Europe, a region considered highly vulnerable to disinformation and propaganda due to its geographic proximity to the war in Ukraine. An issue that was highlighted in a recent IPSOS survey, conducted in cooperation with Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO). In the Baltics, we've entered into long-term partnership with the Civic Resilience Initiative and the Baltic Center for Media Excellence. These two established and well-respected organizations will receive €1.3 million in funding from Google to build on their impactful work towards increasing media literacy, building further resilience and actively tackling disinformation in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Furthermore, we are partnering with the Charles University in Prague, the main research center of the CEDMO project, and providing €1 million in funding for CEDMO to further expand its research into information disorders (such as misinformation, disinformation or clickbait), and work to increase the level of media and digital literacy in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia.

“Google was built on the premise that information is a powerful thing for people around the world. We’re determined to keep doing our part to help people everywhere find what they’re looking for and give them the context they need to make informed decisions about what they see online,” said Google's Vice President for Government Affairs and Public Policy in Europe, Annette Kroeber-Riel during her visit to Prague.

Our support for the Civic Resilience Initiative, the Baltic Center for Media Excellence and the Charles University further builds on the progress announced in November last year during the Fighting Misinformation online summit in Brussels, where European policymakers, NGOs, media organizations, academics and tech companies convened to collaborate and share knowledge about tackling misinformation.