Efforts to counter disinformation often involve difficult ethical trade-offs. Measures such as content moderation, fact-checking, and the use of OSINT can help address harmful manipulation, but they also raise questions around transparency, proportionality, accountability, and unintended consequences.
As new investigative methods emerge and concepts such as transparency are increasingly instrumentalised by authoritarian actors, these dilemmas become even more urgent.
The session will open with the presentation of our newly developed short course, Ethics in the Fight Against Disinformation: Practical Dilemmas for Media and Civic Actors, designed for journalists, educators, civic actors, and AI practitioners, followed by expert perspectives on real-world ethical challenges in the field.
Welcome to join our discussion with Georgios Terzis, Professor at Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Nelly Pailleux, Chief Operations Officer at CheckFirst; and Maria Giovanna Sessa, Research Manager at EU DisinfoLab.
Speaker: Nelly Pailleux, Chief operations officer, CheckFirst
Nelly Pailleux is COO and co-founder of Checkfirst, a Finnish organisation tackling information manipulation through brains and tech. She works at the intersection of digital investigations, information integrity, and platform accountability (training journalists in OSINT, researching foreign interference and algorithmic amplification). Nelly also worked at Les Surligneurs, an independent French fact-checking outlet.
CheckFirst is, alongside other European NGOs, a founding member of Obsint, a NGO created to promote open source intelligence guidelines to create a framework of good practices for OSINT stakeholders.
Speaker: Georgios Terzis, Professor, Brussels School of Governance and Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Georgios Terzis is a Professor in Communications and Ethics at the Brussels School of Governance. He did postdoctoral research at University of Pennsylvania and University of Oxford on media and security, he received his Ph.D. in Communication Science from the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel, and he studied Journalism and Mass Communication in Greece, UK, USA and The Netherlands.
Throughout his academic career his research focused on media and security, research and media ethics, media governance, journalism and participatory communication, disinformation and media literacy, risk and crisis communication, science communication, science diplomacy and international academic cooperation, the role of art and culture in conflict resolution, cultural diplomacy, and the right not to access the internet.
He has been teaching and doing research in communication departments of many universities for more than 25 years. He has been involved in more than 20 international research projects and networks.
He is also the founding Chair of the Journalism Studies Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association, and has been working as a reviewer for most of the major publishing houses and journals in the communication science field, as well as for the European Commission and the Council of Europe.
Speaker: Maria Giovanna Sessa, Research Manager, EU DisinfoLab
Maria Giovanna Sessa is the Research Manager at EU DisinfoLab. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and has previously worked for research foundations, think tanks, and as a university teaching assistant. She authored blog posts, book chapters, articles, and an e-book, as her research interests focus on the use of disinformation in political communication, gender-based attacks, and international crises, including FIMI. Lately, she has been working around DSA enforcement, linking research and policy implementation.
Moderator: Inès Gentil, Project Manager, EU DisinfoLab
Inès Gentil is a Project Manager at EU DisinfoLab, where she contributes to the implementation of three EU-funded projects: ATHENA, vera.ai, and EDMO BELUX 2.0. She holds a double Master’s degree in Policies and Governance in Europe from King’s College London and LUISS, with a specialisation in European external relations. Before joining EU DisinfoLab, she worked at a London-based consultancy specialising in EU and UK public affairs, and has prior experience in the fields of defence, security, and public diplomacy.
The opinions expressed are those of the speakers/authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of EU DisinfoLab. This webinar does not represent an endorsement by EU DisinfoLab of any organisation.