The last chapter before the next adventure

Hey there.

It’s time for me to share a good and a bad news.

Perhaps I will start with the bad news first: although I would very much like to continue this newsletter, which have provided me with joy and sense of commitment to our community’s work, I have decided to take a break.

I feel really sad about stopping it before the end of the 2024 election cycle, but the reason behind it is one I feel super happy and excited about.

Let me share now the good news: I have recently started at Graphika as an investigator. I feel proud and honored to join this team of high-skilled people to contribute, in another context, to countering FIMI and other online harms. And although I am known for my productivity, I have to admit the workload has definitely increased.

I hope, that either through writing or speaking, I will have the chance to continue sharing with you my thoughts and hearing about yours, comparing findings and supporting the implementation of a common understanding of the challenges we face online, notably when it comes to foreign threats.

And I will definitely let you know once my research is finally published!

Before I close this chapter, I want to share with you some thoughts on what we have seen since the beginning of the year when it comes to elections and information manipulation.

• Foreign Information Manipulation and Information (FIMI) is a handy word. It helps bringing countries together, having a common standard to look at the problem. But the problem is multifaceted and FIMI itself is a limited concept. Do we need additional ones, or should we broaden the current one?

• The news conversation is dominated by interests from different stakeholders. Interests about Gen-AI, about Russian and Chinese influence, about the status of U.S. elections. In this constellation, can we create an inclusive news cycle that address the challenges faced by the global majority? Our own echo chamber could be one of our biggest vulnerabilities.

• Addressing this last thought, as our common understanding of the red picture grows stronger, it would be irrelevant to systematically accuse our adversaries of all the defects of our societies. As the conversation leans towards developing the blue response, should we automatically embrace this process? The uneasiness we face might be neither red neither blue, just a greyish online information environment whose effects on our democratic debate are still yet to assess.

EU elections are coming up this weekend. We may not feel prepared, but this is a feeling that seems linked to me to the world of online news. There is no time for preparedness. There is always a bitter aftertaste that the work is never finished properly. However, I feel that this year the EU community, whether through FIMI-ISAC, EDMO, the DSA, government agencies, platforms’ electoral integrity initiatives or independent researchers have never been more prepared. It is the result of years of efforts and commitment, by many people and not just a few. Many people who work in the shadows, who are not necessarily quoted in newspaper, and who continuously monitor and share their observations to turn them into valuable insights.

I want to give them all a big shout out and many thanks for their hard work.

And leaving you with one last thought: why all the fuss about the cycle of elections?

After all, the time of an information operation is much longer than that.