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

🌍 Disinformation stories and narratives about climate change circulating in the weeks ahead of the June vote. Climate change is one of the topics most targeted by disinformation, and this is true also during the EU election campaign. In recent weeks, several false stories circulated that tried to deny the impact of human activity on the climate as well as the existence of the climate crisis itself, following the scheme of classic denialism. However, most of the stories proven to be false or misleading by independent fact-checking organizations seem to follow the pattern of the so-called New Denial, targeting electric vehicles, renewable energy sources and other countermeasures to global warming, portraying them as dangerous, more polluting than internal engine vehicles, or unreasonable. In Germany, it was also recently claimed that France had declared illegal the construction of wind turbines, a false claim in line with others identified in some EU countries in early 2024. 

In some cases, allegations degenerate into conspiracy theories, such as claims that natural disasters are deliberately caused to simulate climate change or to impose new lockdowns.


♊ Disinformation campaign attributes fake quotes about Ukraine to celebrities. According to GADMO, the EDMO Hub covering Germany and Austria, a recent disinformation campaign has circulated on social media with fake quotes about the Ukraine war attributed to German celebrities, like Rammstein singer Till Lindemann or actor Til Schweiger. These false quotes appear mostly aimed at undermining EU support for Ukraine. The German Federal Ministry of the Interior links them to the Russian “Doppelgänger” operation, known for imitating websites of credible media outlets and public institutions.

The fake celebrity quotes have been found as paid posts in Facebook’s ad library, targeting users in Germany. GADMO reports that Meta did not comment in detail on the ads, but referred to its previous actions against what it defines as “the largest and most aggressive ongoing Russian influence operation”. This comes at a time shortly after the EU announced to investigate Meta for potential violations related to handling political advertising. Read the full article here: Desinformations-Kampagne schiebt Promis falsche Ukraine-Zitate unter (in German)

🤖 Chatbots struggle to provide accurate political information. A recent experiment by Correctiv – an investigative and fact-checking organization part of the EDMO network – revealed that three of the most used chatbots (Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT) fail to provide accurate answers to political questions, especially about the upcoming EU elections. The chatbots either fabricate information, recommend non-existent Telegram channels, or provide incorrect details about candidates. For instance, none of them correctly identified the German front-runners for the EU elections, and in some cases, they even suggested content from far-right sources. Read the full report here: Chatbots: Don’t Bother Asking AI About the EU Elections.

Another recent experiment conducted by the New York Times explored how easy it is to train a chatbot to create and spread disinformation online at scale. Read the report here: See How Easily A.I. Chatbots Can Be Taught to Spew Disinformation .

If you have suggestions, comments or requests about this newsletter, you can write to edmo.tfeu2024@eui.eu

What is a “disinformation narrative”? Please find here a short methodological note about the definition used by the EDMO fact-checking network.

The Disinfo Bulletin 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.