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 tactics and actors: Examine the methods used by foreign and domestic actors to manipulate decision-making and public opinion, exploit societal divisions, and undermine democratic institutions.
• Building defences: Identify and explore strategies to strengthen regional resilience, including promoting media literacy, fostering democratic values, and strengthening cybersecurity defences.
• Regional cooperation: Discuss the importance of cooperation among the countries in the region to address the common threats.

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:

• What are the pernicious influences on the information space of the countries in the region? What is the role of external actors or foreign authoritarian governments in these harmful influences (primarily the Russian Federation, but also China, Hungary, Iran, and others)?
• How do coordinated external disinformation and anti-democratic propaganda campaigns use local populist sentiments and spokespersons, and vice versa – how do local actors use propaganda narratives? What are the different stakes – internal and external, political and economic – that drive different local actors?
• What are the narratives that are detrimental to information resilience and social cohesion? What are the commonalities but also the contextual differences between them in comparative terms? How do these narratives resonate – to what extent do they compete and to what extent do they cross-pollinate?
• In particular, how are narratives about Russia's invasion of Ukraine propagandistically packaged and disseminated in the region? And how are existing historical narratives and national myths being used for propaganda and disinformation?
• What types of actors and networks – foreign, but mostly local (politicians, parties, public speakers, media, etc.) – are involved in anti-democratic propaganda and disinformation? What are the networks and alliances between these actors, but also the antagonisms between them? Is there evidence of transnational networks coordinating disinformation/misinformation campaigns, and, if so, what are they and how do they operate?
• What are the technological means by which disinformation and propaganda are carried out in the region? And what is the role of social media? How can we counter propaganda and disinformation technologically?
• What are the social vulnerabilities and grievances on which anti-democratic propaganda feeds?

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:

• Data analytics for sensemaking of complex media and social media datasets;
• Data visualization for impact and effective communication;
• Media and social media monitoring: tools and techniques to extract and analyse information at scale;
• Language technologies for augmenting narrative data;
• Algorithmic transparency and techniques to better understand the impact of recommendation algorithms on content distribution;
• Artificial intelligence: use of AI and LLM to streamline analysis or content creation;
• Technologies for advertising and monetizing disinformation and propaganda.

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:

• Novel approaches and methodologies, including best practices for the study of media and the implementation of media literacy training in the digital age;
• Emerging areas of research and their implications for education, policy, and society;
• Collaboration opportunities to address pressing media literacy challenges in the region;
• Identifying and working with vulnerable groups to empower them to acquire and share new knowledge and skills among fellows, colleagues or communities.

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:

• Information operations concepts;
• Capability development for information operations (focus on innovation);
• Ecosystem development for information operations (collaboration and sustainability, public – private partnership);
• Governance and institutions for successful information operations (strategic planning and change management);
• Measuring the impact of information operations for continuous improvement.