Identifying disinformation before it spreads
The SOURCE collaborative project is developing a globally unique, freely accessible early-warning platform to combat disinformation. Suspicious content on the web is systematically tracked down, analysed and prepared for countermeasures.
The aim: to protect democratic public spheres and strengthen the resilience of our society in the long term.
Democracy thrives on the free exchange of ideas and views – but this can only work if there is a shared factual foundation.
Targeted disinformation undermines precisely this shared basis of information.
Disinformation sows doubt about institutions, the media and science, and makes people susceptible to extreme views that promise seemingly simple answers.
The result:
Disinformation campaigns can quickly and permanently poison the formation of public opinion in a society – a threat to democracy.
There are blind spots when it comes to detecting disinformation on the web.
1.
Commercial search engines, on which disinformation research has relied thus far, offer neither sufficient data filtering nor an analysis of content origins.
2.
AI-generated content is a key indicator of disinformation – but so far, it has been nearly impossible to use it as such.
SOURCE closes the gaps in disinformation detection with an open, community-based research and analysis platform.
The open, collaborative infrastructure continuously collects large amounts of web and social media data and automatically analyzes it for signs of disinformation.
Web content is analyzed both in terms of its origin (Where does the content come from? Who is spreading it, when, and through which channels?) and its content (What does it say? Is the text AI-generated, written in a manipulative way, or factually incorrect?).
The SOURCE database expands upon the Open Web Index, developed in the EU project OpenWebSearch.eu, and tags potential disinformation artifacts with a broad spectrum of indicators – ranging from the detection of AI-generated content and linguistic style analyses to the analysis of origin, dissemination, and involved actors.
SOURCE is designed for sustainability and is operated as an open community platform—to enable broader, faster, and more technologically supported detection of disinformation in Europe and globally.
The SOURCE Mission: Distinguishing Facts from Fiction
SOURCE supports fact-checking and is open to everyone. Researchers, journalists, civil society, the business community, government agencies, and anyone who values reliable facts can use the platform.
The data processed by SOURCE supports fact-checkers, investigative journalists, civil society organizations, academic communities, companies, and public institutions in their work.
With the help of the SOURCE database, they can identify disinformation and disinformation campaigns and combat them within established frameworks such as DISARM. Use of the SOURCE database will be open and free of charge.
