SOMA, Social Observatory for Disinformation and Social Media Analysis

Following the European Commission Communication on tackling online disinformation, SOMA (Social Observatory for Disinformation and Social Media Analysis) has been launched to provide support to a community that will jointly fight disinformation.

The platform, currently (Sept. 2019) in negotiations with the major social networks to gain better access to their content and data, is based on Truly Media, co-developed by ATC (Athens Technology Centre) and Deutsche Welle and is expecting to connect to many other tools.

One of the aims of this tool is to provide “an easy communication channel with official sources as the European Parliament, the European Commission and Eurostat for requesting their official position in ongoing investigations”.

SOMA project team is made by:

• ATC, Athens Technology Center, a tech expert on fighting disinformation,     it actively develops content verification tools    
• Pagella Politica, an experienced fact-checker dedicated to verifying claims made by politicians and public figures        
• Luiss Guido Carli, an international research centre focusing on social media, data science and digital humanities    
• Aahrus University, expert in big data collection and applied machine learning on social media data
• T6Ecosystems srl, active in consulting and research, will develop an impact assessment methodology to quantify and measure the impact of disinformation

How to become a member

“The European Observatory against Disinformation welcomes fact-checkers, media organisations, researchers, social media innovators, and non-governmental policy makers who show or plan relevant activity in the disinformation/fact-checking field”.

Access to the platform is first granted for a trial period of 2 months. After 2 months, if participants are not directly contacted by the observatory managers, their acceptance is automatically confirmed and granted for the whole duration of the SOMA project (until May 2021) unless they later violate the terms of the Usage and Editorial Policy.

Once admitted, organisations can have up to three persons join the platform and participate in its activities.