EU-HYBNET is a Pan-European network of security practitioners, stakeholders, academics, industry players, and SME actors across EU collaborating with each other in ever increasing numbers to counter hybrid threats. EU-HYBNET aims to build an empowered, sustainable network beyond the scope of the project through its on-going association with a key partner, The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, and it will: define common requirements that can fill knowledge gaps, deal with performance needs, and enhance capabilities of innovation endeavours; monitor significant developments in research and innovation; deliver recommendations for uptake and industrialisation of the most promising innovations that address the needs of practitioners, and determine associated priorities for standardisation; establish conditions for enhanced interaction among its members; and persistently strive to increase its membership and continually build network capacity through knowledge exchange incl. exercises. EU-HYBNET's principal objectives align with the H2020 SEC-SU-GM01-2019 call and are of crucial relevance to it. A technology and innovations watch, facilitated by scientific research, will ensure smooth execution of searching, monitoring, identifying and assessing innovations both under development or already proven, including the level of technology readiness for uptake or industrialisation. EU-HYBNET will bring together practitioners and stakeholders to identify and define their most urgent requirements for countering hybrid threats by undertaking an in-depth analysis of gaps and needs and prioritising those that are crucial to address through effective research and innovation initiatives, including arranging training and exercise events to test the most promising innovations (technical and social) which will lead to creation of a roadmap for success and solid recommendations for uptake, industrialisation and standarisation across the European Union.

Though security is a field of study capable of diverse applications in daily life, security science is a young discipline requiring larger inter-disciplinary effort. ESSENTIAL seeks to develop security science by addressing two of its main problems: the ad-hoc approach to security research and the growing complexity of the security environment. To do so, ESSENTIAL has set itself two main goals: a) to train inter-disciplinary security experts and professionals, to tackle security threats in a systematic manner and b) to increase societal resilience and security by addressing in an interdisciplinary manner 15 research topics, each associated with long-standing problems in the field of security science ranging from modeling security perception and democratizing intelligence to improving security and privacy in data ecosystems. ESSENTIAL will be the first programme of its kind that aims to jointly educate the next generation of interdisciplinary experts in security science, by uniquely exposing the 15 ESRs to: (1) theoretical knowledge and practical expertise in such areas as: (a) the policing and regulation of information-security technology, and (b) the implementation of policies and legal standards within computing and communication systems; (2) real-world environments in law enforcement, intelligence and industry; (3) strong academic guidance offered by highly qualified supervisors and mentors; (4) high tech research infrastructures; and (5) a diversity of interdisciplinary research events, such as workshops, conferences, summer/winter schools. The ESSENTIAL consortium is built upon long-lasting cooperation relations among leading organizations coming from academia, international and national stakeholders and the private sector, many of whom have over 25 years of experience in contributing directly to national, European and UN technology-related policy making.

As risks are not “objective” but socially and culturally constructed, disaster management which is aware, respects, and makes use of local cultural aspects will be not only more effective but, at the same time, also improve the community’s disaster coping capacities. CARISMAND is setting out to identify these factors, to explore existing gaps and opportunities for improvement of disaster policies and procedures, and to develop a comprehensive toolkit which will allow professional as well as voluntary disaster managers to adopt culturally-aware everyday practices. This goal will be achieved by approaching the links, and gaps, between disaster management, culture and risk perception from the broadest possible multi-disciplinary perspective and, simultaneously, developing a feedback-loop between disaster management stakeholders and citizens to establish, test, and refine proposed solutions for culturally-informed best practices in disaster management. Whilst experts from a variety of fields (in particular legal, IT, cognitive science, anthropology, psychology, sociology) will undertake a comprehensive collation of existing knowledge and structures, a number of Citizen Summits and Stakeholder Assemblies will be organised. Systematically, CARISMAND will use an approach that examines natural, man-made and technical disasters, placing at the centre of attention specific aspects that affect culturally informed risk perceptions, eg whether disasters are caused intentionally or not, the different “visibility” of hazards, and various time scales of disasters such as slow/fast onset and short- and long-term effects. By organising six Citizen Summits (two per disaster category per year in two separate locations) where such disaster risks are prevalent , and three Stakeholder Assemblies (one per year) where the results are discussed through a wide cross-sectional knowledge transfer between disaster managers from different locations as well as from different cultural backgrounds.

BACKGROUND:The culture of communications is changing at a rapid pace, driven by the power of internet and social networks. As a result, users are encouraged to create personal echo-chambers at the expense of information pluralism and to move away from ethically informed journalistic accounts. It is, therefore, high time to encourage and empower spokespersons and journalists to get out of information bubbles, critically address the fake news phenomenon and develop responsible and accountable communication patterns and behaviors in the relationship with their audience. To achieve these objectives, CRESCEnt developed a 35 months collaborative endeavor for development of skills and competences related to ethical communication.OBJECTIVES:CRESCEnt aimed to capacitate spokespersons, journalists and communication specialists to use media reporting consciously and ethically. The intellectual outputs have the capacity to teach them to handle and become resilient to fake news, to build an ethics of reporting in texts, contexts, pictures and images, to perform double fact checking and how to provide and obey ethical grounds in handling sources, reporting terrorism, extremist violence and hate speech, the refugee crisis, insider leaks and truth telling for the preservation of democracy, individual freedom of expression and fundamental rights, as well as the rule of law. CRESCEnt approached a cross-sectorial media and strategic communication learning process and a guidelines aimed to change the way spokespersons and journalists in the security field understand and report security threats. CRESCEnt AIMS: (1) to develop a toolkit of techniques, methods and instruments for institutional spokespersons and journalists who communicate on issues related to security and law enforcement, as support in their professional activity; (2) to enhance through learning activities key-competences and skills of the spokespersons and journalists so that they become resilient to fake news, build an ethics of reporting, perform double fact checking, provide and obey ethical grounds in handling sources, report security threats and handle truth for the preservation of democracy and the rule of law. NUMBER & PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS: The targeted profile included institutional spokespersons and communicators, journalists accredited in reporting on security issues, students in journalism and communication management. The project activities were pursued by:- 57 on-site and 68 online attendees to the three Multiplier events organized similarly in Romania, Greece and Spain;- 15 participants to the short-term joint staff training event organized virtually;- 197 learners from the partner institutions and other 12 representatives of external organizations who pursued the virtual learning activities; - 1021 enrolled persons to the online course, out of which 404 completed the course; - 100% of the participants part of the target groups;- 409 subscribers to the newsletter.ACTIVITIES:The project included:- 1 short-term joint staff training event, ensuring the transfer of skills and knowledge to the practitioners from the partners’ organizations;- 3 virtual learning activities, organized with selected learners from the target groups, aiming to introduce practitioners into a new framework for delivering communication in relation to security, prevention and counteraction of criminal acts and innovative training approaches, materials and case studies;- 3 edition of lectures online (the MOOC), addressing the challenge of building awareness and developing resilience to disinformation, fake news, and hostile information influencing campaigns.RESULTS and IMPACT:The project resulted with 3 intellectual outputs:- a guidelines (IO1), which consists in a practical and innovative toolkit which acts as an instrument for efficiently managing public reporting in case of security threats and sensitive issues; IO1 has the capacity to empower spokespersons and journalists to use media reporting consciously and ethically.- a syllabus (IO2), which contains the instructional design and the structure of the learning activity; It facilitates the right premises for a strategic European partnership aimed at consolidating critical thinking and responsible reaction in the communication process.- the MOOC and open educational resources (OERs), which represents a 30-hour training module; the OERs may contribute to increasing the stock of educational digital content available through open access, and allow to extend the formative possibilities of the students and reach a greater number of institutional spokespersons, media professionals, and young journalists.BENEFITS:The results are freely accessible at https://crescentproject.eu/ and the MOOC will be available for future editions.

<< Background >>The project addresses two specific needs. Firstly, the project targets the need of the project partners for innovative and interactive educational content, adapted to the specificities of a digitally skilled future generation of students. Secondly, the project addresses the need of the target group (composed of university professors and M.A. students) for advanced digital skills useful in identifying fake news and spot online disinformation. A series of studies has shown that digital skills in the three project countries are around average and that they are quite low in Romania. While no measurements are yet available, professors are not immune to this lack of skills and no less vulnerable to online fake news and disinformation. Secondly, the project partners lack the capacity to comprehensively address a generation of students which has been born after the internet was created and whose approach to learning is radically different from that of the previous generations. Thus, there is a need, at the level of the partner organization, to design educational content that teaches digital and technical competences holistically, rather than in a disparate fashion and to do so in an interactive way that engages an audience composed of digital natives.<< Objectives >>DOMINOES addresses the digital transformation the ecosystem of news media is undergoing. It supports increasing the digital capabilities of the higher education sector and contributes to innovation in higher education and vocational training. The project's overall objective is to reduce societal polarization by combating fake news and online disinformation in two target groups: university professors employed by the partner universities/civil society trainers and M.A. students in the three partner universities. The project’s concrete objectives are a) to assist the educational staff of partner institutions to acquire digital teaching skills, innovate educational materials and adapt to the ongoing digital transformation; (2) assist educational staff and students in achieving advanced digital skills useful in detecting and countering propaganda, fake news and information manipulation leading to social polarisation, extremism and discrimination in society and (3) create across Romania, Malta and Spain a network of experts in the detection and prevention of propaganda and disinformation that can further advance expertise and foster transfer of know how at the level of the public.<< Implementation >>There are four main types of activities that will be conducted within the project:(1) research activities: conducted by all partners in order to create the academic content of the course curricula, which will help the project consortium to develop and promote a solid shared culture for the target group defined within the project, that will help foster resilience to propaganda, disinformation and information manipulation. The academic curricula will comprise practical and innovative exercises (based on modern learning techniques and methods), as well as supporting information (tips&tricks) that will help the readers understand the applicability of the exercises. (2) training activities: including two types of activities - one pilot session (developed as a Train the Trainers program, dedicated to each partner’s employees, that will help them become familiarised with the architecture of the project and with the curricula and the learning program developed and will allow them to become active promoters, as well as feedback sources for the calibration of the following course sessions) and course simulation (built as an experimental laboratory, dedicated to representatives of the target group defined within the project). The main objective of these activities will be to increase the digital competences of the representatives of the target group by teaching them how to identify fake news, check the accuracy of a piece of news and avoid sharing such stories. (3) dissemination activities: that will help the project consortium promote the results obtained within the project and provide other target audiences, free of charge, with the instruments that have resulted from both research and training activities (an online course available to general population, as well as a toolkit of exercises and simulations).(4) support activities: include implementation activities, other than the ones already presented above. For example, drafting intermediary reports, emailing partners to ask for financial evidence for expenditure etc.. This type of activities will enable partners to ensure the correct and efficient implementation of the project, by taking into account all the regulations provided by the Grant Agreement and by meeting all the deadlines imposed by the National Authority. Moreover, support activities will also provide project partners with the necessary instruments in order to prevent and combat any risk that might affect the implementation process.<< Results >>DOMINOES will create a training curriculum, which will represent a manual on the phenomenon of fake news and online disinformation, especially focusing on the patterns of spread, the types of actors in the information ecosystem sharing fake news and the specific vulnerabilities of people, as well as the relationship between fake news, online disinformation, societal polarization and extremism. Further, the second project result will be a training syllabus, which will consist of a course on how to spot fake news including a number of interactive exercises for the participants in the learning and training activities. The main outcome of the project will be an increase in the advanced digital skills and ability to spot fake news of the representatives of the target group. Further, the participants will have their teaching abilities improved, especially their capacity to address a young generation of digital natives. DOMINOES will reduce societal polarisation, create a new and interactive educational tool that could be transferred to other contexts and organisations, create a network of experts in the field, and disseminate the knowledge that Europeans are facing similar challenges. In addition to the learning activities, DOMINOES will organise four transnational project meetings, that will contribute to the project implementation and three multiplier events which will address people from outside the target group.