False rumors, fake news or hate speech against vulnerable minorities through social media are becoming one of the main threats against democracies. A global strategy against disinformation is crucial as open democratic societies rely on free citizens with the ability to access verifiable information so that they can build their own opinions on different political issues. The main scientific objective of HYBRIDS is to provide researchers with the knowledge necessary to design strategies and tools to response to disinformation on the basis of a deep analysis of public discourse. There have been interesting advances in the automatic detection of disinformation by making use of natural language processing and new artificial intelligence techniques in the specific field of machine and deep learning. However, this is a very complex task that requires a high degree of natural language understanding, inference and reasoning. To improve the strategies to deal with disinformation, HYBRIDS will integrate the structured knowledge provided by social and human sciences into natural language processing tools and deep learning algorithms, so as to develop new hybrid intelligence systems. The concept of Hybrid Intelligence consists of combining machine and human intelligence to overcome the shortcomings of existing artificial intelligence methods. Even though hybrid systems are likely to become more and more decisive in the immediate future, there are very few experts who can design and develop such systems. This is mainly due to the multidisciplinary nature of the hybrid strategy and the difficulty of finding researchers with full training in traditionally separate disciplines such as computer engineering, social sciences or linguistics. We believe it is time to launch a DN with the necessary requirements to train researchers in hybrid methodologies for their application in social studies with an impact on the sustainability of good democratic practices in Europe.

<< Objectives >>-Help detect and combat disinformation through disruptive digital tools.-Empower schoolchildren aged 14-18, especially those in vulnerable situations, through training in ICT tools to detect and prevent disinformation and fake news.-Empower their parents and educators, providing tools and recommendations to help adolescents in this task.-Include the methodology and OER created in the European secondary school curriculum.<< Implementation >>-Creation of a methodological framework based on Focus groups and tools to fight disinformation.-Creation of open educational resources in various formats for secondary school students and their teachers and families, which we will test in local face-to-face training activities and a Virtual MOOC.-Communication strategy, sensitization and dissemination of the project.-Sustainability and exploitation plan with recommendations to policymakers.<< Results >>-A community of experts in disruptive ICT tools against disinformation.-Educational OER on the subject, in 5 languages, for secondary school students and their teachers/families, tested with 500 people in Europe.-50,230 people sensitized through communication, awareness and dissemination activities of the project.-Report with recommendations for policymakers and sustainability plan and exploitation of the results.

People consume news because they need to be informed about the state-of-the-world and events around them, but 54% of citizens think that there is a serious problem regarding fake news and trust in media has decreased to the lowest-point-ever. It is very difficult for citizens to assess the credibility and veracity of news. On the other hand, citizens’ trust is crucial for news media that look for solutions to fight fake news and increase citizens’ trust. The solution is fact-checking, but fact-checking is a very time-consuming and costly task. Newtral is a startup funded in October 2017 with fact-checking as its core business becoming one of the fact-checking pioneers and the leaders in the EU. +40 people currently work in Newtral researching new ways of producing and distributing data-driven journalism in the digital era, being the biggest professional fact-checking team in the EU. Our team is behind the production of ‘El Objetivo’, the first TV-show (+1M weekly live viewers) in the EU to bring fact-checking to a TV format in prime time. Newtral is also a leading member of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), a community of international fact-checkers (51 members) and the only member with a TV show in prime time. ‘El Objetivo’ has been awarded with the “Best Audiovisual journalist fact-checking projects award” by the IFCN. Our ambition is to create a new market by turning professional fact-checking into a scalable and profitable business. Newtral intends to become the gold standard in the fact-checking sector by applying NLP, advance data science methods and AI to the journalism fact-checking work to semi-automate the verification allowing any fact-checking journalist to become a ‘fact-checking centaur’. SME Instrument Phase-1 and Phase-2 will be extremely beneficial in helping the company to accelerate development and market expansion of the solution, boosting the company’s growth to +100 employees and 32M€ revenues by 2024.