Combating disinformation in European Parliament elections with the help of TikTok

Millions of Europeans on TikTok will receive push notifications from next month directing them to a local in-app Election Center. These in-app election centers, which TikTok announced last month, have been set up in partnership with local electoral commissions and civil society organizations, and will be available in the local language of each of the 27 EU member states. A key pillar of the strategy to combat online disinformation is to help people distinguish fact from fiction in this way; moreover, they want to protect the integrity of the elections.

Media literacy campaigns
The initiative is being launched at the same time as additional local media literacy programs are being rolled out across all 27 EU Member States, as detailed in the third report under the EU Code of Conduct on Disinformation. This report was published on March 26 and includes a special section on TikTok’s election integrity efforts.
TikTok worked with local media literacy agencies and trusted fact-checking partners to launch 11 media literacy campaigns between July and December 2023. In total, TikTok created 18 campaigns in 2023, generating more than 220 million impressions and engaging approximately 50 million people reached TikTok.
Another nine such campaigns are planned for 2024. By the end of this year, Tiktoks communities in each of the 27 EU member states will have access to localized, educational videos on vigilance against disinformation.

Protecting election integrity
In addition to these campaigns, TikTok continued to protect the integrity of TikTok’s platform under the Code while national elections took place in several European countries. Some examples:
• Newtral, TikTok’s fact-checking partner, and Maldita, a Spanish fact-checking and media literacy organization, helped TikTok create educational videos on media literacy and how to be critical of sources.
• TikTok partnered with DigiQ to develop its media literacy strategy and created an in-app Slovak election center, which directed users to expert information on DigiQ’s website.
• In collaboration with new fact-checking partner Demagog and FakeNews.pl, TikTok helped the Polish community access official voting information and educational videos through an in-app Polish election center.
• Together with fact-checking partner Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) and Nieuwscheckers, a fact-checking initiative of the Journalism & New Media course at Leiden University, people received up-to-date information in the in-app Dutch election center.