Welcome to Disinfo Bulletin, your daily update from the EDMO network. Today's most relevant stories: 

 💉 Disinformation about the pandemic regains traction. Among the already signaled disinformation narratives about Covid-19 and vaccines, long-standing false narratives resurfaced in the last few days. In various countries, false claims are circulating that the UN warned of the arrival of a new pandemic, that anti-COVID vaccines were released before the disease broke out, or that some countries are withdrawing from the WHO. In Italy, it was claimed on May 4 that the EU Commission had revoked AstraZeneca’s authorization to market its vaccine.

On May 8 AstraZeneca then announced the actual withdrawal of its vaccine, due to a “surplus of available updated vaccines”. The main reason provided is that it has been made obsolete by the mRNA shots. No side effects have been reported other than those already known, but it is highly likely that the news of AstraZenecas’s decision will boost disinformation on the issue ahead of the EU elections. The false narrative about the alleged high dangerousness of vaccine shots has been one of the most prominent and pervasive disinformation narratives since the outbreak of the pandemic.


⛔️🇵🇱 The false theory that bilingual road signs in Poland mean that the country is giving away parts of its territory. In Poland, a video on TikTok falsely claims that Silesia – a historical region of Central Europe that is mostly within the country, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany – will have road signs in Silesian, Polish, and German due to a new law recognizing Silesian as a regional language. According to the video, this would prove that a part of the region will return under the control of Germany, as it was before WWII, to be repopulated with Ukrainian citizens and in an attempt to “erase Poland”. However, the proposed law seeks to recognize Silesian as a regional language, allowing for bilingual signs in Silesian and Polish. It has nothing to do with Germany or the resettlement of Ukrainian refugees, as the video misleadingly suggests.


📺 Fears of worsening state of media freedom and information in Slovakia. According to CEDMO, the local EDMO Hub, media freedom remains a concern in Slovakia following the passage of a draft bill to overhaul RTVS, the country’s public broadcaster, which also led to a strike of its journalists. In addition to these concerns, according to local and international media outlets, the possibility of the politician Lukáš Machala becoming the new director of RTVS is particularly worrying. Machala is a former member of right-wing and far-right parties in Slovakia, and he is known for supporting conspiracy theories. In the past few days interview footage of him questioning the true shape of the Earth has been making the rounds on social and traditional media, but Machala spread less trivial and much more worrying falseness in the past, about Putin, Covid-19, Jews, and the Illuminati, and these conspiracy theories have recently resurfaced.

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This tool gathers material from the inputs of the EDMO fact-checking network, as well as a recently launched public database from the EFCSN network (Elections 24 Check), and the various national EDMO hubs, including community initiatives and insights from individual fact-checking organizations.