BROD's Significant Contribution to the Sofia Information Integrity Forum 2025

How can we counter disinformation? This was the topic of the lecture by Prof. Stephen Lewandowsky that kicked off the Sofia Information Integrity Forum 2025 on November 5, 2025. The event was officially opened by Prof. Silvia Ilieva, Director of the GATE Institute, and Dr Keith Kiely, Science Coordinator of BROD.

The forum was the result of the collective efforts of the Bulgarian community working against disinformation, including the Foundation for Humanities and Social Studies – Sofia, the Center for the Study of Democracy, the GATE Institute, Identrics, Graphwise, and Sensika.

Among this year’s speakers were notable figures such as Saman Nazari, Chief Analyst at Alliance4Europe, specializing in Chinese and Russian influence operations; Dr. Neville Bolt, Director of the Sympodium Institute for Strategic Communications and Editor-in-Chief of NATO’s academic journal Defence Strategic Communications; and Jānis Karlsbergs, Deputy Director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga.

Another key highlight was the panel Navigating the Information Landscape: Bulgaria’s Policy Pathways from Regulation to Resilience, moderated by Gloria Trifonova from BROD partner Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD). The discussion examined Bulgaria’s evolving approach to information integrity and resilience, with Goran Georgiev, Senior Analyst at CSD, exposing automated disinformation ecosystems such as the Pravda Network, Elizaveta Polyakova, Analyst at CSD, outlining how gendered and identity-based disinformation fuels division and aligns with pro-Kremlin narratives, and Simona Veleva, Chairperson of the Council for Electronic Media, highlighting the implementation of the Digital Services Act and the importance of aligning with the upcoming European Media Freedom Act to strengthen accountability and societal resilience.

BROD further played a significant role in the Election Integrity in Southeast Europe workshop panel, featuring Isabelle Wirth from AFP, Calin Georgia from Funky Citizens, and Keith Kiely from the GATE Institute at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. The event was moderated by Iglika Ivanova. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities of securing transparent and trustworthy electoral processes across Southeast Europe. Another BROD partner, Commetric, presented Business as a Stakeholder in Disinformation Countering—an analysis of CEO messaging consistency on energy transition, by Elena Mihalska, Project Manager at Commetric, and Slavi Slavov, ML Engineer.

On the second day of the forum, thanks to Iglika Ivanova and Nikola Tulechki, the Wikipedia communities were introduced, including the Romanian-Moldovan, Serbian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and North Macedonian communities. Participants included Costanza Sciubba Caniglia, Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead at the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as Nataliia Tymkiv (Wikimedia Ukraine), Milica Ševkušić (Wikimedia Serbia), Basak Tosun (Wikimedia Türkiye), Strainu (Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group), and Kiril Simeonovski (Wikimedia Macedonia).

Day 3 began with a panel on comparative research perspectives on information integrity, with a multi-level analysis of democratic vulnerability presented by Dr. Keith Peter Kiely, Experienced Researcher at GATE. This was followed by a Logical Fallacies Detection Exercise, organized by BRODhub. Meanwhile, the exceptional Andy Stoycheff, Founder & Director of NTCenter—also a BROD partner—explained what happens in our bodies and minds when we process information.