Since 2018, the EU has focused on disinformation as an evolving challenge, with a high potential to negatively influence democratic processes and societal debates. In fact, all member states acknowledged disinformation’s increasingly adverse effects on society and launched a detailed action plan to fight it. Within this framework, in 2018, the EU launched a Code of Practice on Disinformation together with roadmaps for implementation from partners in the private sector.
In Athens Technology Center, we are rather proud to be one of the private companies actively engaged in this action plan, supporting publishers, news agencies, and other stakeholders of the European media sector by providing national and multinational fact-checking hubs with the appropriate technological means to counter disinformation.
Developing technologies against disinformation since 2010
To begin with, through SOMA we established the first European Observatory against disinformation, forming a community of more than 100 organizations working together in collaborative investigations against disinformation. SOMA also established three national centers of excellence in Italy, Denmark, and Greece.
Based on this experience, we started providing our own services monitoring cases of disinformation on behalf of the European Science Media Hub of the European Parliament. Then we became one of the five founding members of EDMO, responsible for the technological infrastructure offered to a community of more than 25 European fact-checking organizations.
Similar support we offer currently to 3 of the 8 multi-national EDMO hubs (BeLux, Central Europe (i.e. Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia) and Bulgaria).
Our Fact-Checking Solutions: User Generated Content Verification & Twitter Analytics
Truly Media: A collaborative fact-checking tool
A collaborative platform for the analysis and verification of digital content, in real-time. It allows cooperation across organizational boundaries, time zones, and geographic regions.
Developed in partnership with Deutsche Welle (DW).
TruthNest : An enhanced Twitter analytics tool
Our proprietary Twitter analytics tool helps with the identification of true influencers, and with the detection of trolls and bots, by profiling Twitter user accounts based on their activity, network, and influence.
Our Success Stories as Media Industry Leaders
Deutsche Welle (DW) and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), exploit Truly Media to aggregate and verify content from a diverse range of sources with a particular focus on Social Networks.
Amnesty International was using Truly Media during its everyday operations, in order to verify information related to human rights violations.
We have also supported the fact-checking activities of Mongolian journalists of Fact Check Mongolia in their endeavors to report independently and accurately during the 2020 elections.
In addition, the Indonesian & Philippines fact-checking networks used Truly media for coverage of the Myanmar 2020 General Elections. Last but not least, the Media Development Foundation (MDF) in Georgia used also the verification platform in the project ‘Myth Detector Laboratory for Media Literacy’, to respond to disinformation challenges by media literacy programs and content production.
Our current research activities: Highly invested in R&D
In ATC, we are constantly involved in early research activities even if these are still one step away from the market. Some examples involve powerful technological infrastructure to counteract disinformation related to digital content & social media platforms.
- Copyrighting and monetizing content via blockchain
- Enable all sorts of content creators to share their media, while keeping control of their intellectual property rights
- A decentralized network for intelligent, automated, and accessible digital asset management systems, where traditional stakeholders and other media owners can share, enrich, verify, and monetize multimedia content
- Data Journalism & Storytelling
- Enhanced data analytics solution to enable journalists extract facts and insights
- Smart digital tools to repurpose and enrich images for immersive storytelling
- Video content production tools
- An integrated software platform to allow video collection from multiple sources, along with the recognition and automated annotation of a particular segment of each video
- Fighting deepfakes by using state-of-the-art audio forensics technologies to detect audio tampering in videos
Who are we
Athens Technology Center (ATC) is a Smart Business Enabler; supporting the effective operations of Government entities and the profitable growth of companies in +16 industries around the globe, by supplying and managing properly customized software solutions.
In ATC, we use our extensive expertise in designing & providing novel solutions for media organizations, journalists & fact-checkers. From editorial and digital asset management tools, integrated with cross-channel publishing capabilities, to awarded solutions that help media organizations fight misinformation, we are committed to helping our clients transform digitally and seize opportunities for better business outcomes.
Highly invested in researching use cases of artificial intelligence, machine learning, audio forensics, data analytics, and more to meet the constantly changing demands of the market.
