The first training in the above series, led by Givi Gigitashvili (DFRLab) and Maia Mazurkiewicz (Alliance4Europe), was attended by journalists.

In the first part of the training, participants were introduced to the concepts of disinformation and misinformation. Methods of fighting false, deliberately misleading information were discussed. The presenter Maia Mazurkiewicz, an expert in counting disinformation and co-founder of Alliance4Europe, discussed examples of conspiracy theories originating from social media. Among other things, they discussed what a threat deepfake technology poses to civil society today.

The second part of the training was on protecting elections from foreign influence, led by Givi Gigitashvili, open-source analyst and researcher at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). Among other things, the presenter discussed the concepts of interference and hostile influence. In his presentation, he showed examples of foreign influence on elections that took place during the US (2016) and French (2017) election campaigns. One of the topics covered during the training was manipulation of the electoral process. According to the DFRLab expert, countries where the electoral process is highly digitised are the most vulnerable to manipulation, while the less 'digital' the elections are, the lower the risk of them being influenced by external forces.

The training provided an opportunity to share insights into Poland's preparations for our country's election cycle. Participants emphasised in the discussion that in a time of ongoing information warfare, ensuring the security of elections from domestic and foreign hostile influences will be a very difficult task.

***

Alliance4Europe is a non-profit start-up offering digital intelligence for the development of democracy, creating active communities and civic technologies.

The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) is the first organisation to bring together technical and policy expertise on disinformation, communications technology, democracy and the future of digital rights. It started operations in 2016 and has since been exploring approaches to the global information and technology ecosystem around the world.