The Independent Countering Disinformation Centre (ICDC) took part in the EaP Civil Society Fellows’ Networking Event, held in Chișinău on 11 – 12 September 2026, bringing together more than 30 civil society activists from across the Eastern Partnership.
A central discussion on the first day focused on countering disinformation and misinformation, with contributions from Paolo Cesarini, Chair of the Executive Board of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), Stela Leucă, Executive Director of ICDC, and Lara Moraru, Project Manager at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
Stela Leucă presented ICDC as a recently established platform bringing together 13 Moldovan civil society organisations with expertise ranging from countering disinformation and media literacy to community resilience and local engagement. She explained that the initiative emerged from a need for organisations to move beyond working in parallel and find ways to “leverage each other’s skills and abilities and also effort”.
“The whole idea was that we would be working together on countering disinformation through the work that they are already doing, using the expertise that they have and the locations that they have,” Leucă said, highlighting cooperation and the ability to generate greater impact together as central to ICDC’s approach.
Paolo Cesarini underlined the importance of bringing information integrity efforts closer to the wider public. “We do not reach the heart and minds of ordinary people as we should. There is still a link missing,” he said, pointing to the need for stronger connections between civil society initiatives and the communities they seek to reach.
The discussion also explored practical approaches to strengthening information resilience, including analysing not only whether individual content is false, but also the actors involved, the narratives they promote, the methods used to distribute them and their effects in the real world.
The exchange demonstrated that countering disinformation goes beyond the work of fact-checking organisations. Civil society groups working directly with communities can also play an important role in helping people recognise manipulation, access reliable information and make informed decisions.