room: Gamma

Are you an early-career researcher or analyst, or a newcomer getting started in countering foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI)? Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) Canada, in partnership with Graphika, is hosting a half-day, hands-on workshop ahead of #Disinfo2026 designed for those new to the field.

What you'll learn:

• Key frameworks and methodologies analysts use to detect and monitor foreign state-aligned influence operations
• OSINT techniques for cross-platform tracking, network analysis, and real-time monitoring
• Operational security best practices for staying safe online

The workshop concludes with a live exercise using Tutki (developed by CheckFirst), where you'll run your own end-to-end OSINT investigation across five simulated social media platforms, and present some of your key findings.

This workshop is organised by Rapid Response Mechanism - Global Affairs Canada.

room: Eta

Ghost Shift will provide synthetic intelligence packages and scenario materials of a fictional threat network, target audience dynamics, and the legal and ethical parameters governing the scenario.

Participants will analyse network vulnerabilities, focusing on where to impose operational costs and cognitive friction rather than simply debunking narratives, and draw on an operational toolkit (covering intelligence data, automated effects, and influence capabilities) to build a targeted counter-campaign. The session will use red teaming and dynamic injects, incorporating adversary counter-moves to force real-time adaptation and test campaign resilience.

At the end of the session, participants will engage in a structured debrief evaluating campaign impact, collateral risks, oversight considerations, and proportionality.
 

Registration will be available to participants.

This workshop is organised by Ghost Shift.

room: Omega

In this workshop, the participants will get to enter Mundovia, a three-round wargame that puts practitioners on both sides of an election interference campaign. It converts the abstract vocabulary of FIMI into concrete operational trade-offs that participants must make under time pressure.

The goal of the exercise is to build the operational instincts and cross-functional reflexes that election-integrity practitioners need to anticipate and counter FIMI campaigns. The exercise puts participants in the position of both attacker and defender rather than lecturing them.

Objectives:
• Pressure-test the sequencing logic of a multi-month FIMI campaign against a vulnerable democracy
• Force live trade-offs across cyber, information, civic, and security domains under finite resources
• Surface how compounding decisions, both own and adversary, reshape the operating environment
• Expose gaps in participants' own organisational posture that conventional briefings rarely reach

This workshop is for participants working on or interested in countering FIMI and hybrid threats to democratic processes.

Registration will be available to registered participants.

This workshop is organised by PGI.

Our casual pre-conference gathering the evening before the first conference day – the best way to break the ice and start connecting with your peers.

Location to be shared with registered participants. 

room: Alfa

Opening remarks by Diana Wallis, EU DisinfoLab's Board President

Interview with Judge Kimberly Prost, the International Criminal Court (ICC)

Independent justice is a cornerstone of the rule of law. After WWII, the creation of the United Nations and, later, of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague marked a decisive breakthrough in the effort to maintain peace and hold perpetrators of war crimes and genocide accountable.

The current US administration has decided to reverse that course. By launching a global disinformation campaign against the ICC and placing several of its judges on the US sanctions list, it has undermined both these individuals and international law compliance more broadly.

Judge Kimberly Prost of the ICC was placed on the sanctions list after she and her fellow judges authorised an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by the US military in Afghanistan.

In this opening interview of #Disinfo2026, she tells her story: how the sanctions have affected her ability to live her life, and what they reveal about the current state of international justice.

room: Alfa

Presentations

This session addresses one of the most uncomfortable questions in the counter-disinformation field today: how did the United States become a FIMI threat for Europe? The session will explore how the counter-disinformation community rebuilds resilience without Washington, what solidarity looks like in a fractured transatlantic environment, and how to push back against on these operations.

Speakers:

Adam Fivenson, Center for Security, Innovation & New Technology at American University
Alex Finley, Former officer of CIA’s Directorate of Operations, Centre for Strategic Advantage
Emerson Brooking, Nonresident Senior Fellow, DFRLab

Chair:

Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, Fundación Maldita.es

room: Beta 2

Presentation

“Enforcing the DSA is a priority for the Commission.” This sentence has echoed through policy discussions like a mantra.  Meanwhile, in a mirror galaxy far, far away, a mirror European Commission has spent the last four years trying not to enforce the EU's digital services act. Learn about this alternative reality where words replace deeds, where ambition stands proud over the corpse of hope, where the Commission in action is Commission inaction..

In this session, our very own Joe McNamee will walk us through a step-by-step guide to how not to enforce the DSA – and you may find it uncomfortably familiar.

Speaker:

Joe McNamee, EU DisinfoLab

room: Beta 1

Presentations

Speakers:

Aleksandra Wójtowicz, PISM/CEEDDW

Tom Willaert, Royal Military Academy of Belgium

Sohan Dsouza, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Chair:

Madis Vaikmaa, Estonian Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority

room: Zeta

Presentations

Over the past decade, our community has learned to spot disinformation techniques like impersonation and CIB, mostly on social media. New technologies, alongside legacy ones – AI companion tools, prediction markets, and under-the-radar spaces like gaming chats and teletext – are becoming new entry points for harmful narratives. This panel brings together researchers mapping these emerging vectors and what they mean for detection, response, and accountability.

Speakers:

Massimo Flore, Aurora
Emmanuel Heymann, Cyabra
Michalina Grzelka, NASK-PIB

Chair:

Alice Echtermann, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR)

room: Zeta

Panel

On 23 December 2025, the US government (USG) imposed travel bans and deportation orders on five European figures – former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, Imran Ahmed, Clare Melford, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, and Josephine Ballon – accusing them of censoring US social media platforms.

The use of legal intimidation to wage personal attacks raises its own free-speech concerns as well as questions about the appropriate use of legal punishment in a policy debate. The United States Government’s attacks to intimidate individuals and organisations are an unprecedented escalation in defense of US corporations seeking to avoid regulation and criticism. This panel will examine the chilling effect these tactics can potentially have on the community of researchers, journalists, and former government officials who fight disinformation, propaganda and hate speech online. The panel will also discuss how some are fighting back against these tactics.

Speakers:

Claire Pershan, Coalition for Independent Technology Research
Josephine Ballon, HateAid

Chair:

Gregory Rohde, EU DisinfoLab

room: Beta 2

Presentations

It's all about enforcement, right? But what happens when the enforcers are not taking all the actions they should? In this session we'll hear from journalists and activists how they've been trying to have digital regulation enforced. It's a tale of transparency that suddenly becomes optional, and where nobody's is really in charge.

Speakers:

Alexander Fanta, Follow The Money
Domen Savič, Independent researcher

Chair:

Katrīna Ašmane, Independent policy researcher

room: Alfa

Presentations

This session examines how disinformation is deployed not only to obscure war crimes, but also to actively enable, deny, and reframe them - turning information manipulation into a weapon of war in its own right. Drawing on the case of Bucha, the session explores the mechanics of atrocity denial in real time, and how propaganda functions as a measurable driver of battlefield behaviour whose evidence can be channelled into accountability and justice mechanisms.

Speakers:
Peter Pomerantsev, The Reckoning Project
Anna Vyshniakova, Lingva Lexa

Chair:
Diana Wallis, EU DisinfoLab

room: Beta 1

Panel

In a growing number of countries, the information space is being redefined as a security domain — and that redefinition is reshaping who gets to speak. When illiberal governments frame information as a battlefield, the logic of war migrates into domestic politics: journalists, researchers, academics, and human rights defenders are recast as internal threats, subjected to delegitimisation campaigns, surveillance, and harassment, until little room remains for independent scrutiny or debate.

 
This session examines that machinery through two deliberately contrasting contexts. In Israel, speakers will discuss how securitised information practices, rooted in a powerful security apparatus, have narrowed civic space, targeted Palestinian voices and those who document their situation, and given rise to a globally active private influence industry. In Hungary, a strikingly similar closure of civic space was engineered without any comparable security context — through media capture and state-funded narrative infrastructure projecting "traditional values"; narratives to allies abroad.

Our speakers will describe the situation and ask: what does it take to reverse this process?

Speakers:

Achiya Schatz, FakeReporter
Bulcsú Hunyadi, Political Capital

Chair:

Susan Morgan, EU DisinfoLab

room: Alfa

How do physical security incidents become opportunities for information manipulation, and how can investigators respond? Following a brief introduction to Gerulata Technologies, this presentation uses selected cases from Central and Eastern Europe to demonstrate a practical OSINT workflow. It connects sabotage and border or airspace incidents with the online narratives surrounding them, moving from multilingual data collection to mapping actors, tracing amplification and assessing evidence. Using Gerulata's tools, we will show how analysts turn fragmented online signals into a decision-ready brief: verified facts, key narratives, uncertainties and response priorities. The session will distinguish documented coordination from narrative similarity, and online engagement from real-world impact. Participants will leave with a transferable framework for investigating information threats and supporting evidence-based responses.
 

Speaker:

Tomáš Kriššák, Gerulata Technologies

Chair:

Ana Romero-Vicente, EU DisinfoLab

This session is sponsored by Gerulata Technologies.

room: Beta 2

Presentations

As platform self-regulation and regulatory proceedings prove slow and incomplete, strategic litigation at national level is emerging as a parallel enforcement track – and in some cases a faster and more effective one, capable of reaching outcomes that regulatory processes cannot compel and that platforms' own moderation systems consistently fail to deliver. This session examines how civil society organisations and legal advocates are taking platforms to court, drawing on concrete cases to explore what litigation strategies can achieve that content moderation and regulatory processes cannot, and what a maturing legal landscape for platform accountability looks like in practice.

Speakers:

Laureline Lemoine, AWO
Daniela Alvarado Rincón, Democracy Reporting International
Adrien Basdevant, Entropy

Chair:

Christine Allan de Lavenne, SIDE Law & Advisory

room: Alfa

Presentations

What happens when people no longer have meaningful access to trustworthy, plural, contextualised, or durable information? This session explores the idea of “information deserts” beyond the traditional understanding of disinformation, examining how different forms of informational absence, suppression, and distortion shape democratic participation and public life.

Speakers:

Lovise Aalen, Chr. Michelsen institute
Natália Sabol Tkáčová, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom
Iván Caballero, CORE

Chair:

Dr. Dmytro Chumachenko, National Aerospace University "Kharkiv Aviation Institute"

room: Zeta

Presentations

In the fast-moving arena of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), the counter-disinformation community faces a critical bottleneck: a lack of standardised, interoperable operational infrastructure. This session brings together leading platform practitioners and technology builders to showcase how modern OSINT tools turn abstract digital threats into actionable, interoperable security incidents - moving from macro narrative tracking to granular forensic analysis, and from detection to operational response.

Speakers:

Jakob Tesch, Gretchen AI
Anaïs Meunier, Storyzy
Norik Selimi, Pikasa Analytics

Chair:

Peter Benzoni, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

room: Beta 1

Presentations

In an information ecosystem where algorithms reward polarising and false content, Wikipedia offers a structurally different model: open, collaborative, transparent knowledge production governed by community oversight. How can the Wiki model inspire the counter-disinformation field about designing digital spaces that resist manipulation?

Speakers:

Nathan Forrester, Wikimedia Foundation
Michele Failla, Wikimedia Europe
Iglika Ivanova, Safer Internet Centre

Chair:

Julie Demaline, Arcom

room: Zeta

Presentations

This session addresses one of the most persistent gaps in the counter-disinformation field: the lack of independent and comparable metrics that can turn documented platform failures into real accountability.

The session will present concrete findings on the scale and persistence of misleading content, the higher levels of engagement often enjoyed by disinformation accounts, and the gap between platforms’ public policies and their actual monetisation practices.

Speakers:

Emmanuel Vincent, Science Feedback
Fabio Daniele, Global Disinformation Index

Chair:

Jessica Valisa, Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications

room: Beta 1

Keynote

Please join us for a special session at #Disinfo2026, in which Robin Berjon will take the audience on a journey of unshitting the internet and discovering "social media" that doesn't suck your soul, doesn't suck your data, doesn't suck at all.

Speaker:

Robin Berjon, Modal Foundation

room: Alfa

Presentations

This session challenges the counter-disinformation field's over-reliance on social media data by examining under-monitored channels through which FIMI operates at scale – from broadcast media, systematically analysed using LLMs and transcription pipelines, to satellite infrastructure, where contested claims about outages, GPS spoofing, and attribution shape public perception and military legitimacy.

Speakers:

Peter Benzoni, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Kevin Limonier, Geode, Université Paris 8

Chair:

Amitis Sedghi, BBC Monitoring

room: Beta 2

Presentations

This session makes the case that the counter-disinformation field must move from reactive monitoring to active methodological adaptation - turning disinformation and influence operations against adversaries to reduce their benefit, impose cost, and enhance deterrence, within democratic values and constraints.

Drawing on concrete cases including narrative dynamics at the Polish-Ukrainian border and large-scale LLM-powered analysis of pro-Russian Telegram channels targeting Western audiences, presentations explore how disinformation gains influence through both content and the environments in which it circulates - and what a more active, adaptive counter-disinformation posture looks like in practice.

Speakers:

Alesya Sokolova, Center for Data and Research on Russia (Cedar), Novaya Gazeta Europe 
Klaudia Rosińska, Academy of Social and Media Culture

Chair:

Ruurd Oosterwoud, DROG Group

room: Alfa

Panel

In addition to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the world also witnessed the full-scale information war Russia has launched on Western audiences and beyond. This panel will not recount all the information and hybrid operations launched, but will ask a simple question with many difficult answers: how to win an information war? When democratic and peaceful societies are under informational attack, should there be any retaliation against the agressor? And if yes, what could they be, and which safeguards should be put in place to ensure coherence with the rule of law and fundamental rights?

Speakers:

Halyna Padalko, MIT

Peter Pomerantsev, The Reckoning Project

Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Former Advisor to Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Chair:

Mikko Salo, Faktabaari, SAUFEX

room: Beta 2

Presentations

As climate disinformation is increasing its impact, the designation as a systemic risk under Article 34 of the Digital Services Act (DSA) would increase obligations on platforms to deal with this harmful content. We will move beyond observation to show how rigorous evidence can force climate risks into the DSA’s enforcement framework, making sure that platform accountability is no longer optional.

This session is designed to equip regulators with the evidentiary roadmap needed to close this gap. By bridging the distance between scientific measurement and legal enforcement, speakers will demonstrate how climate-related harms can be systematically processed under Article 35.2. 

Speakers:

Louna Wemaere, QuotaClimat
Ravi Sreenath, Ripple Research
Joe McNamee, EU DisinfoLab

Chair:

Vygantas Vaitkus, Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania (RRT)

room: Zeta

Presentations

Coordinated Information Manipulation Sets require to develop a coherent approach between data, infrastructure and evidence building. This session examines the infrastructure dimension of FIMI - the technical backbone that enables influence operations to function at scale and persist over time - and explores models for mapping, exposing, and disrupting it, and what interventions at this level can achieve that content-focused approaches cannot.

Speakers:

Inês Narciso, Protect.ngo
Jean-Philippe Salles, Filigran & Hervé Letoqueux, CheckFirst
Rachel Winny, Centre for Information Resilience

Chair:

Viktoras Daukšas, Debunk.org

room: Beta 1

Presentations

Financial links and connections are essential to demonstrate accountability of actors involved in disinformation campaigns. This session will showcase methodologies for investigating the financial infrastructure that sustains disinformation - from the cryptocurrency networks that fund influence operations to the monetisation systems that reward harmful content creators and the commercial ecosystem of influence-for-hire providers. Participants will leave with practical frameworks for understanding how financial flows can provide investigative leads that content analysis alone cannot.

Speakers:

Victoire Rio, WHAT TO FIX
Spencer Woodman, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - ICIJ

Chair:

Martin Laine, Delfi Estonia

Disinformation on the big screen. This year, our Cine-Club will feature a screening of Oscar winning documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin.

A Russian teacher secretly documents his small town school's transformation into a war recruitment center during the Ukraine invasion, revealing the ethical dilemmas educators face amid propaganda and militarisation.

See trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9150MCMSrgc

Join us for a free evening exploring the oldtown of Vilnius.

Meeting point at 19:30: Vilnius Cathedral Bell Tower

Join us for a gathering with drinks, music, and good company at Lukiškės Prison.

Please note that it will be required to purchase a ticket to attend the gathering. Registered participants have received the details for signing up for this event by email.



This walking tour and social event are sponsored by Surfshark.

Start your conference day by joining a community of fellow participants for a gentle yoga practice designed to help you unwind, reconnect with your body, and find a sense of ease, through accessible movement, breathing, and relaxation techniques.

No prior knowledge of yoga is required, come as you are, wearing clothes that you feel comfortable in.

The session is guided by a certified yoga professional who teaches at Yoga Communautaire.

To register for this yoga session, contact us at conference@disinfo.eu with the subject line “Registration request for yoga session on 8 October”. Mats will be available on site. Space is limited to 20 participants, on a first-come first-served basis.

room: Beta 1

Presentations

The use of AI in investigative work is reshaping practices and methodologies and prompts how investigative practice must evolve to stay rigorous in an environment where the tools of manipulation and the tools of detection are converging. 

In this session, speakers will examine how AI is reshaping OSINT and the detection of CIB (coordinated inauthentic behavior), while also tackling a critical, less-discussed challenge: protecting LLMs themselves from poisoning and manipulation, to keep the research environment transparent, reliable, and workable.

Speakers

Zuzanna Wojciak, WITNESS
Yuliia Dukach, Molfar Intelligence Institute
Chine Labbé, NewsGuard

Chair:

Mikhail Doroshevic, FactCheck.LT

room: Beta 2

Presentations

This session presents unconventional approaches to counter-disinformation, from theatre and podcasts to music, radio, and low-tech community outreach, exploring how storytelling, culture, and creativity can open new pathways for societal resilience. The session discusses the arguments that the field has been too kind to the powerful bad actors who weaponise conspiracy, and that increasing the social cost of disinformation at the top is as important as building resilience at the bottom.

Speakers:

Gunta Sloga, Baltic Centre for Media Excellence
Mumbere Katsuve Rodriguez, Freelance Journalist
Mike Wendling, Day of Reckoning Media

Chair:

Janis Karlsberg, NATO Stratcom CoE

room: Alfa

Presentations

This session examines the implications of turning individual minds into contested spaces. Building on an academic perspective that understands influence operations not only as a content problem, but as a cognitive one, we look at how beliefs, emotions, identities, and decision-making processes are increasingly targeted. From ancestral practices such as astrology, which may be instrumentalized for cognitive manipulation, to emerging technologies such as AI systems that can undermine cognitive integrity, speakers will unpack how the battle for human cognition may pose risks to democratic societies, and consider ways to mitigate these threats.
 

Speakers:

Tatsiana Ashurkevich, The Christo Files
Nicoleta Prutean, Centre for Future Generations

Chair:

Kirsten Wild, University of Poitiers

room: Zeta

Presentations 

In fragile and high-stakes information environments, the challenge is no longer only about debunking false claims - it is about sustaining the people, systems, and infrastructures capable of maintaining information integrity under pressure. In this session, fact-checkers from different regions will tell how they're building the layers of resilience required for their verification work when traditional methods begin to break down: in conflict zones, polarized environments, resource-constrained contexts, and increasingly AI-saturated information ecosystems.

Speakers:

Stephan Mündges, European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN)
Saja Mortada, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ)
Ahmad Primo, Verify-sy

Chair:

Marie Bohner, Agence France Presse (AFP)

room: Beta 1

Panel

On 28 February 2026, Israel and the United States launched aerial strikes on Iran. This session examines how kinetic operations have run in parallel with sophisticated information warfare during the strikes - from Citizen Lab's PRISONBREAK investigation into Israeli-linked deepfake accounts, and Iran's own viral campaign of AI-generated propaganda videos to modify perception of the war for Western audiences.

Speakers:

Alberto Fittarelli, The CitizenLab
Melanie Smith, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)

Chair:

Katarína Klingová, GLOBSEC

room: Zeta

Presentations

The Indo-Pacific has emerged as a critical testing ground for sophisticated Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) campaigns. This session brings together experts from Japan, Taiwan, and Australia to examine how information operations linked to China increasingly function as part of broader grey-zone strategies that combine digital influence, geopolitical pressure, and security coercion.

Speakers:

Mai Hiraiwa, Japan Nexus Intelligence
Jasper Hewitt, Doublethink Lab 

Chair:

Wei-Ping Li, FactLink

room: Alfa

Panel

As competition between the United States and China reshapes the global information environment, the strain is felt unevenly across countries. Each country’s information ecosystem is different, shaped by structure, dependencies, histories, and culture. 

This panel explores countries as complex information ecosystems, including those of Finland, Germany, Lithuania, and Canada. In so doing, the discussion will cover how various factors - from interconnectivity to demographics and media ownership - all shape a country's vulnerabilities to the G2 power competition, how they are likely to respond as a result, and what lessons can be shared looking across these information ecosystems. 

Speakers:

Liutauras Ulevičius, Vilnius University Faculty of Communication
Jussi Toivanen, University of Turku
Sina Laubenstein, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Chair:

Alicia Wanless, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

room: beta 2

Panel

Decentralised platforms and protocols (Bluesky/AT proto, Mastodon/Fediverse) represent an alternative to traditional monolithic social media companies. However, these new models bring new challenges to Trust and Safety teams and the community in general due to their architecture. 

This panel explores the operational realities of deploying automated defense tools across decentralised spaces. It analyses how spaces like Mastodon and independent community labeling services like Skywatch.blue can flag scams, follow-farming, and manipulation. Together, the speakers evaluate how community-driven, composable moderation can realistically maintain safety and democratic resilience without a central "kill switch."

Speakers:

Cathleen Berger, Independent
D. Scarnecchia, Skywatch

Chair:

Robin Berjon, Modal Foundation

room: Beta 1

Presentations 

Effective counter-disinformation requires more than top-down regulation; it requires governments to act as the active architects of their own defense. 

This session examines how Member States are orchestrating sovereign operational initiatives to act as the engine of a national response. National level coordination is crucial to unfold if we want to build European cohesion and cooperation to deter disinformation actors. In this session, representatives from France, Spain and Lithuania will dive into the articulation between analytical and response systems in France, coordination models, OSINT-driven DSA enforcement, to explore how these specialized state capabilities are integrated into broader ecosystems. 

Speakers:

Andrius Katinas, The Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania

Salomé Herce, Independent, former advisor to the Government of Spain on countering disinformation 

Marie-Doha Besancenot, French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs
 

Chair:

Michael Berk, Alton Corp

room: Beta 2

Presentations

At the crossroads of multiple geopolitical influence, the Arctic region is also becoming a confrontational information space. This panel examines disinformation in the Arctic as a case study in evolving influence operations, drawing on original research into Russia's coordinated messaging around the Northern Sea Route, cross-border narrative amplification into Danish and Greenlandic information ecosystems, and whether these operations are designed to shape AI language models as much as human audiences. The session closes with a more provocative discussion: growing evidence that the United States has, in specific Arctic contexts, operated as a FIMI actor.

Speakers:

Telli Karacan, Analyse & Tal
Jonathan Guiffard, Cassini Conseil
Ben Shultz, The American Sunlight Project

Chair: Diana Wallis, EU DisinfoLab

room: Alfa

Presentations

This session examines how LLMs can themselves become objects of investigative scrutiny - exploring methodologies for probing, auditing, and documenting their behaviours, biases, and failure modes in ways that are rigorous, reproducible and relevant to the counter-disinformation field. It presents two complementary approaches: one based on benchmarks, and another focused on multilingual narrative analysis.

Speakers:

Christo Buschek, Independent Investigative Data Journalist 
Kalina Bontcheva, University of Sheffield

Chair:

Carl Miller, Demos
 

room: Zeta

Presentations

The design and functioning of online engagement in general, and social media platforms in particular, have enabled an infrastructure of fake engagement (likes, followers, comments, reviews) - is a commercial ecosystem operating largely in plain sight, one the counter-disinformation field has so far only partially mapped. This session investigates that infrastructure from multiple angles: how fake social activity markets are organised across European contexts, how manipulation networks can be traced to network-level understanding, and how the supply chain of sim cards, payment processors, and hosting services enables operations to scale.

Speakers:

Sviatlana Höhn, University of Luxembourg, Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust 
Brian Liston, Recorded Future
Esther L., VIGINUM

Chair:

Victoria Smith, DISARM Foundation

room: ETA

What is it?

During one hour at Disinfo 2026, attendees have the opportunity to ask questions to three specialised legal experts. This is not a formal consultation, but an informal space to ask questions about regulation, technology law, and compliance.

How it works

• Duration: 1-hour total session - 8 October 12:40 - 13:40
• Format: First come, first served (walk-in basis)
• Per person: Maximum 10 minutes
• Note: High demand may result in long waiting times to access experts

✓ This is informational guidance, not legal advice or formal representation

✓ Experts can provide orientation and next steps, not solve complex cases

✓ If your issue requires formal legal action, experts will recommend appropriate next steps

The three legal experts & their expertise

🏛️ EU Regulation & Compliance - Laureline Lemoine (AWO)

Expertise: Digital Services Act (DSA), Digital Markets Act (DMA), European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), implementation and enforcement structure of EU regulations (content moderation, researchers access to data)

✓ Information shared is not subject to attorney-client privilege

Laureline Lemoine is a Senior Policy Associate at AWO, providing legal and policy analysis on platform regulation, fundamental rights, online advertising, AI and data protection, including large scale research projects on content moderation and DSA enforcement for the European Commission. Prior to this, she worked for digital rights NGOs in Brussels and was a trainee at the Court of Justice.

⚖️ Technology, IP, Media Law & Digital Rights - Christine Allan de Lavenne (SideLaw Office)

Expertise: Copyright, Intellectual Property, Digital Rights, Tech Governance and Regulation, and Human Rights

Christine Allan de Lavenne is an American and French emerging technologies legal and policy Advisor and French-licensed Attorney. She is the Founder and Lead Counsel at SIDE Law Office, based in Paris and Silicon Valley,  focused on EU technology regulation, digital law, IP and media law. With 25+ years of experience spanning international policymaking, national institutions, private practice, academic initiatives, litigation, and strategic consulting, she helps technology leaders translate complex regulatory frameworks into practical business strategies, while enabling policymakers to better understand industry realities and foster effective collaboration.

📋 Strategic Litigation, Digital rights & AI Compliance - Adrien Basdevant (Entropy)

Expertise: Strategic litigation against platforms or regulators, AI Act regulatory compliance, compliance strategy for tech companies, DSA / content moderation, Data Protection / GDPR, Cybercriminality / Criminal law

✓ Information shared can be subject to attorney-client privilege

Adrien Basdevant is a tech lawyer based in Paris. He founded Entropy, a law firm working at the intersection of emerging tech, law, and public policy. Adrien advises innovative organisations on cutting-edge and complex regulatory challenges (AI, data, platform, IP, encryption). He also defends and represents individuals and NGOs in impact litigations and digital rights cases.

room: Alfa

This presentation explores the landscape of digital misinformation and fraud, beginning with a collaborative study with Malmö University. Research testing the public's ability to identify automated bots revealed that half of participants could not distinguish them from human users. The study identifies intense emotional triggers as the primary factor that bypasses critical thinking and leads to these errors in judgment. The focus then shifts to the sophisticated nature of modern internet scams. SMS and phone-based attacks are increasingly advanced, capable of compromising devices, stealing identities, and draining financial accounts. Analysis of the data demonstrates how demographic factors, specifically age and frequency of internet use, correlate with vulnerability. Understanding the intersection of technical sophistication and emotional manipulation is essential for navigating the web safely.
 

Speaker:

Justas Pukys, Surfshark

Chair:

Ana Romero-Vicente, EU DisinfoLab

This session is sponsored by Surfshark.

room: Zeta

Presentations

Obscure ad campaigns on local election day in France. This session will explore how two investigative journalists have been able to investigate and trace operations to election-disrupting mercenaries: companies that are hired to sway votes using disinformation. And how this new Disinformation As A Service sector is hitting back at the same systems that enabled it in the first place.

Speakers:

Amaëlle Guitton, Libération

Omer Benjakob, Haaretz 

Chair:

Maia Scott, The Citizen Lab

room: Beta 2

Presentations

This session examines strategies for countering identity-based disinformation, specifically targeting LGBTQIA+ communities. Moving beyond traditional fact-checking approaches, speakers will address framing and re-narrativisation techniques, along with platform accountability measures and engagement with policymakers.
 

Speakers:

Gabrielle Aguilar van Gend & Laura Postma, Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld & Geluid
Martha Dimitratou, Repro Uncensored

Chair:

Maria Giovanna Sessa, EU DisinfoLab

room: Beta 1

Panel

The concept of a "whole-of-society" approach to democratic resilience is gaining traction, but beyond the catchy phrase lies a mindset shift still to be impulsed. Cooperation between donors, public authorities, and civil society organisations needs to be revisited, and new alliances developed. This session brings together intergovernmental organisations, national governments, CSOs, and EU DisinfoLab to explore how that mindset can shift in practice.

Speakers:

Boris Lazov, Council of Europe
Dainius Radzevicius, Office of the Inspector of Journalism Ethics of Lithuania
Susan Morgan, EU DisinfoLab

Chair:

Ana Perona Fjelstad, Financial Mechanism Office of the EEA and Norway Grants

room: Alfa

Panel

Public trust has shifted away from traditional media and formal institutions toward individual voices and "authentic" digital personalities. However, this decentralised influence ecosystem has rapidly become a commercial marketplace for manipulation. Rather than focusing on simple algorithmic bots, this session dissects how corporate public relations, domestic political campaigns, and foreign authoritarian regimes systematically buy and build manufactured authenticity to distort public debate.

Speakers:
Lea Frühwirth, CeMAS - Center für Monitoring, Analyse und Strategie
Jeanne Maurin-Bonini, IRSEM / Panthéon-Assas University

Chair:

Nelly Pailleux, CheckFirst

room: Beta 1

Presentations

Russia's information operations extend far beyond Europe. This session brings together three perspectives on tracking Russian influence operations: an examination of Russia's African Initiative, a more agile successor to Wagner running decentralized influence operations across the Sahel; an analysis of 75 leaked documents revealing Moscow's strategy toward the Global South and the role of security services; and a case study on how Kremlin narratives around Central Asia and Ukraine are localized for Uzbek audiences across Sputnik and Telegram.

Speakers:

Sarah Boutboul, Blackbird.AI

Lou Osborn, INPACT / All Eyes On Wagner (AEOW)

Dilfuza Mirzakhmedova, Factchecknet.uz, Modern journalism development center 

Chair:

tbc

room: Zeta

Panel

X’s offices raided in France. Telegram’s CEO arrested. Hybrid operations perpetrators sentenced to prison. Elections ordered to be rerun. As regulatory proceedings remain slow and civil litigation gains ground, a more fundamental question is emerging: should Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference be more systematically treated as a criminal matter? And what would criminal liability for platforms, and their CEOs, look like in practice? This session examines the legal frontier of FIMI accountability. It will explore whether existing criminal law frameworks can address influence operations, what obligations platforms have to act rather than remain passive, and how documented evidence of harm can be translated into legally robust cases that are admissible before a court.

Speakers:

Christine Allan de Lavenne, SIDE Law Office
Typhaine Roblot, Partnerships for Integrity (P4I)
Laura Stefan, Expert Forum

Chair:

Beatriz Marín, the European External Action Service (EEAS)

room: Alfa

Presentations

Public authorities, ministries, and country-branding agencies increasingly find themselves on the frontlines of asymmetric information warfare, as hostile actors exploit open digital feedback loops to exert narrative pressure on state institutions. This session examines how public bodies can move beyond slow, bureaucratic responses to build practical frameworks for early warning and narrative defence - from analysing coordinated campaigns like the one alleging Sweden "kidnaps" Muslim children, to simulation-based training for diplomatic corps.

Speakers:

Viktor Nilsson, Swedish Institute
David Millar, Civis Global
Julian Schmid, Austrian Energy Agency 

Chair:

Urve Eslas, Government Office, Estonia

room: Beta 2

Panel

Health disinformation isn't new, but the scale, speed, and sophistication with which it now spreads  along with its real-world consequences for vaccination rates and public health outcomes, demand new operational responses.

In this session, speakers will unfold examples of illegal medical content being deployed online -whether through fake doctors or fraudulent advertising-, the current gaps in mitigating this risk, and the reasons why such content is successful, built on a trust crisis between patients and medical systems.

Speakers:

Alexios Mantzarlis, Indicator

Daniel Fazekas, Bakamo

Chair:

Aleksandra Atanasova, Reset Tech

room: Alfa

The disruption of US funding, along with current European funding models based on projects or election cycles, is keeping the counter-disinformation community stuck in precarious conditions. To break these vicious circles, new models and instruments need to be implemented to maintain a vital and independent civil society in Europe.

In this final plenary session, donors and high-level representatives share their takeaways from the conference, draw conclusions on what needs to change, and what kind of structures and funding should be made available so our community can withstand these pressures and remain sustainable over the long term.

Speakers:

Ingrid Schulerud, Special Representative for Democracy and the Rule of Law of the Norwegian government
Tomasz Chłon, Plenipotentiary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Counteracting International Disinformation
Matthew Stempeck, Evens Foundation
 

Chair:

Roy Virah-Sawmy, EU DisinfoLab Advisor

room: Alfa

We are all committed to justice, habeas corpus and the rule of law. But what happens when disinformation reshapes our overall perception of facts? How incomplete procedural information, selective facts, emotionally charged labels, institutional confusion, repetition, and the omission of exculpatory context can gradually convert an allegation into presumed guilt—long before any court has examined the merits of the case.

This presentation examines, from a first-person perspective, how two ongoing criminal investigations in Romania were transformed into powerful public narratives: the so-called “fake hirings” case within the Department for Emergency Situations and the alleged “helicopter trafficking” case concerning the replacement of an H135 emergency medical helicopter.

While public-interest journalism and independent criminal investigations play a legitimate role in bringing wrongdoings to the public eye, the overall functioning of the rule of law and justice is founded on facts and rational observation, rather than on vilification of individuals.

Speaker:

Raed Arafat, Secretary of State, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Government of Romania - Department Of Emergency Situations

room: Alfa

#solutions

Initially, we planned a final session called: "Leveraging OSINT-led analysis as the technical infrastructure of DSA's systemic risk assessments: how a Coordinated Information Manipulation Set approach can foster in a tense cognitive information environment?"

Instead, The Onion wanted to talk about humour. Right...

In the past years, The Onion has been ascendant—with over 100,000 print issues sold every month, millions of online readers, and the recent takeover of InfoWars. What does this prove? That in a period of disinformation, stupidity, and terrible lies, people are hungry for an outlet that points out the tidal waves of bullshit circulating online, pushes back, and does so without becoming incredibly annoying like the average pundit or politician. Why does humour do this so well?

Speaker:

Mike Gillis, The Onion

Chair: 

Greg Rohde, EU DisinfoLab