In an era where democratic values are under increasing pressure, the integrity of the information space has become a vital pillar of national security, public trust, and international stability. Domestic and foreign actors are actively challenging the democratic order – both within individual states and on the global stage.
To what extent will authoritarian powers such as Russia, China, Iran, and others succeed in leveraging information manipulation to align parts of the Global South against democratic nations?
How vulnerable are our societies to propaganda and disinformation campaigns that deepen internal divisions and erode public faith in democratic institutions?
What strategies, tools, and partnerships are needed to safeguard the integrity of the information ecosystem and counter foreign interference effectively
From Ukraine to Turkey, and from the Western Balkans to Bulgaria and Romania, Southeast Europe and the Black Sea region face a uniquely high level of vulnerability to foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). The Forum offers a space for regional dialogue, international collaboration, and strategic innovation.
Following its successful launch in 2024 – with over 65 speakers and 250 participants – the 2025 edition expands its impact to foster a robust, unified, and forward-looking regional response to the evolving information threat landscape.
Contributions to this track will address the ever-growing challenge of malign foreign influence in Europe’s most vulnerable region.
Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has reinforced the Kremlin’s playbook of using its economic presence in Europe and networks of enablers and amplifiers to influence national decision-making and public opinion. Disinformation and propaganda have become key tools for advancing the Kremlin’s geopolitical and geoeconomic interests.
At the same time, the landscape for independent media around the world has changed dramatically over the past decade, facing a nexus of economic and political challenges, including the disruptive impact of rapid technological advances in social media and AI, and perennial questions about financial sustainability and new models of media business development.
The vulnerability of countries in Southeast Europe and the Black Sea region to malign foreign influence, including disinformation and propaganda, has been exacerbated by governance deficits, weak democratic institutions, non-existent or ineffective legal and institutional frameworks to counter FIMI, intertwined economic, political, and security networks with strong business or ideological links to Russia, and oligarchization and capture of media sectors by private interests.
The contribution will explore:
The Sofia Information Integrity Forum invites scholars focusing on Southeast Europe and the Black Sea region to present their original research in the broad field outlined by the following questions:
Technology completely mediates our relationship with information. While we readily accept its presence from the most public to the most intimate spaces, we have yet to understand its role and profound implications for the integrity of our information spaces.
Moreover, with the advent of ever more powerful AI, it seems that the rate of complexity of the technology is outpacing the rate of our understanding of it at the scale required. Its omnipresence at least helps us all agree that technology is both an integral part of the problem and undeniably part of the solution.
The Technologies against Disinformation track of the Sofia Information Integrity Forum aims to put the technological lens at the centre of the debate and invites practitioners in the following areas:
Given the horizontal and vertical fragmentation of the information space, we will place particular emphasis on insights and solutions that are explicitly relevant to Southeast Europe and the Black Sea region.
The Sofia Information Integrity Forum invites experts in media literacy to submit papers with a focus on the specific challenges and opportunities faced by practitioners in the region.
Media literacy is widely recognized as a crucial tool in combating disinformation and enhancing regional information resilience and is thus the cornerstone of any effective long-term strategy aimed at countering disinformation’s corrosive impact on our societies. Media literacy equips audiences with critical skills to identify and reject mis- and disinformation, assisting in the identification and rejection of actors, networks and sources which actively spread disinformation/misinformation.
Given the regional vulnerability to information manipulation and interference, the significance of media literacy education and research is increasingly important in Southeast Europe and the Black Sea region. The development of media literacy toolkits and best practices tailored to these regional specificities are therefore a vital component in efforts to develop information space resilience.
The Media Literacy and Education track aims to foster collaboration and accelerate the development of knowledge in this critical area, with a focus on the following aspects:
Establishing a counter-disinformation ecosystem integrates processes, organisation, technology and people to develop a capability to gain advantage in the contested information environment, improve its integrity and resilience to malicious information operations. The Framework for Countering Foreign State Information Manipulation is a good basis for efforts to provide a collaborative platform for stakeholders to develop national strategies and policies to ensure safeguards for freedom of expression, protection of marginalised groups, transparency in media ownership, and a commitment to protect elections from foreign malign influence.
The true metrics of success in developing the ecosystem and capabilities are successful information operations and their impact on the integrity and resilience of the information environment against malicious information operations by our adversaries, as well as the level of protection of the cognitive domain and the achievement of superiority in the observation-orientation-decision-action cycle of information operations.
We are looking for papers and speakers to share experiences and models of successful information operations for maximum impact on the integrity and resilience of the information environment. We are interested in identifying best practices in building capabilities, developing an ecosystem for planning and executing operations, assessing impact, supporting change and continuously improving our ability to achieve information environment superiority.
Key themes are:
