What we do
The threat of misinformation on social media during Spanish, Portuguese, and EU elections hinders the peninsula’s democracies.
Only 56% of Portuguese and 33% of Spaniards report to trust the news (Digital News Report 2024).
Many people are still oblivious to what disinformation is, the ways in which it spreads and how to recognize it. This prevents voters from differentiating true and false information. This affects their choices, increases distrust in the political system and influences societal divisions.
SmartVote was created to promote the ethical use of technology and to guarantee the rights of citizens. The project fights disinformation to promote a more participatory and conscious democracy.
SmartVote’s objectives
Promote media literacy and conscious democratic participation.
Design and co-create an online misinformation identification tool created in collaboration with citizens.
Develop targeted media awareness and media literacy actions with journalists, young people and journalism students.
The development of end-user training on disinformation patterns to empower media professionals, educators, and volunteers to teach others how to use SmartVote and foster critical thinking.
The development and dissemination of SmartVote, an AI-powered tool that identifies disinformation patterns and promotes critical thinking. It will leverage deep learning, social network analysis, as well as multilingual and multimodal technologies to support informed decision-making.
Partners
SmartVote is being developed by a consortium of 6 partners from Spain and Portugal, representing media, civil society, and academia, coordinated by Fundación Cibervoluntarios.
Fundación Cibervoluntarios
Fundación Cibervoluntarios coordinates this project. It is an NGO dedicated to the promotion of knowledge and use of technology for the empowerment of citizens and the safeguarding of their rights. Cibervoluntarios is a pioneer in technological volunteering with more than 20 years of experience developing programmes for an inclusive digital and social transition. It has a network of more than 4,500 cybervolunteers, and more than 5,000 national and international collaborating entities. In SmartVote, Cibervoluntarios focuses on research and literacy, specifically, focusing on:
- contributing to the theoretical analysis of the impact of AI on disinformation.
- collaborating in the testing of the Smartvote tool.
- developing the training materials and organising workshops with young people, especially FakeNews Labs with journalism students.
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
The Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) is a public institution founded in 1985 by one of the founders of the Spanish Constitution, jurist Gregorio Peces-Barba. In the QS ranking of the best universities in the world under 50 years old, UC3M is ranked 35th worldwide and 12th in Europe. The UC3M team collaborating on the SmartVote project have extensive experience analysing disinformation in media, social networks, corporate spheres and media literacy. The team is part of the European research projects Iberifier: Iberian Media Research & Fact-Checking Hub and Iberifier Plus: Iberian Digital Media Observatory.
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid is the largest and oldest of the technical universities in Spain. The UPM team is formed by members of the Applied Intelligence & Data Mining group, AIDA. The main research areas of the group cover: Machine learning (Deep Learning, Clustering, HMM, Time series analysis, ensembles, XAI), Social Network Analysis (community finding algorithms, graph computing, information flow analysis) or human behavioural mining (radicalisation, polarisation). The group has participated in 60+ competitive projects (national and international) with more than 3 million euros of funding, and has published 200+ journals and 300+ conference papers. The research group is currently involved in several competitive projects: MARTINI, IBERIFIER+, CIRMA, DAGVI, MuseAI (ii) IBERIFIER, CIVIC, DisTrack, FightDIS, XAI-DisInformation.
Centro Protocolar de Formação Profissional para Jornalistas
Cenjor - Centro Protocolar de Formação Profissional para Jornalistas (professional training center for Portuguese journalists) was created in 1986 as the result of a protocol signed between the Portuguese Government, the general-directory for media (DGCS), the Journalist’s Union and The Press Association. Cenjor is a body with legal personality under public law, administrative and financial autonomy and its own assets, whose remit is to promote education and professional training activities, primarily aimed at journalists and other employees of media companies, with the aim of improving the service they provide to the community, through continuous training and the dignification of information professionals. Cenjor will coordinate workshops for journalists and the implementation of training courses for young people. They have several ongoing projects: B-DIGITALMEDIA, IBERIFIER+. Previous projects: IBERIFIER, PFMO, MEDIACOACH.
OberCom
Founded in 1999, OberCom is a research centre in the field of communication sciences whose aim is to analyse and reflect on contemporary communication dynamics. It has been a member of the IBERIFIER - Iberian Digital Media Observatory consortium and EDMO since 2021, and has been responsible for producing the publication Digital News Report Portugal since 2015.
OberCom's work centres on the transformation of the media ecosystem. It also produces knowledge on topics such as disinformation and Artificial Intelligence. OberCom's mission is to mediate an open debate on media. In SmartVote, OberCom is carrying out research into young people's relationship with AI and disinformation, as well as their behaviour during election periods, seeking to convert this knowledge into more effective tools and training for this demographic.
Club Abierto de Editores
Club Abierto de Editores (CLABE) is the most important media association in Spain, with more than 190 member groups and nearly 1,500 publications across all formats, frequencies, and content types. CLABE is the only publishers' association that belongs to CEOE and CEPYME. It is a founding member of the European Independent Media Publisher (EIMP), a union of European media outlets aimed at promoting an environment that fosters a diverse, competitive, and innovative media publishing sector. CLABE works in collaboration with CEDRO. Additionally, it organizes conferences against disinformation, where it developed the project Comprometidos con la verdad, a book featuring industry experts to combat this phenomenon. This organization will be in charge of communication for Smartvote.e.
