A4E Counter Disinformation Network (CDN)

The A4E Counter Disinformation Network (CDN) is a pan-European collaborative initiative designed to preempt, detect, and combat information manipulation. Bringing together a diverse coalition of OSINT researchers, journalists, fact-checkers, academics, other practitioners and their organisations.

At a time when democratic resilience is tested by the spread of coordinated manipulation campaigns, disinformation and influence operations, the CDN plays a central role in supporting media, policymakers, and civil society to take effective action. By validating and amplifying the work of practitioners and equipping responders with evidence-based insights, the CDN works to safeguard democratic systems and strengthen societal trust.

By collaborating systematically using common approaches, the network holds platforms to account and stops foreign interference and influence operations by uncovering and reporting cases of information manipulation. We report cases to the European Commission, national government agencies, media, and civil society, using frameworks such as the Digital Services Act, the Code of Conduct On Disinformation, and sanction laws.  

Read our Reports

Collaboration and Crises Response Platform

The CDN gathers all member organisations on a common digital platform where quick and simple collaborations can be shaped:

  • Collaborative Projects: Members can create joint projects where participants collaborate on joint publications, maximizing the impact of their work by combining their knowledge and reach.
  • Crises and Major Event Response: During major crises and events, such as elections, the CDN has a Crisis Response Workflow that can be activated to help practitioners coordinate to avoid double work and quickly alert responders of threats.
  • Joint Data Access and Monitoring: When possible, the CDN provides its members data-access and common monitoring tools, allowing organisations to collaborate on building queries.

Knowledge Valorisation and Amplification of Ecosystem Work


Practitioners are producing a wide range of reports, methodologies, and tools that benefit a wide range of different stakeholders. The CDN works to provide the people who can use these resources are made aware of their existence.

  • Elevating Practitioners Impact: By publicly sharing findings, reports, and successes, CDN highlights the expertise and findings of practitioners, reinforcing their credibility and making sure their work to reach responders, such as policymakers, who can do something about their findings.
  • Knowledge Valorisation: Distribute findings, reports, new methodologies and tools to practitioners who can use them in their work, ensuring that the impact of investments in the development of the countering community is maximised.
  • Informing the Public: By collaborating with media, the findings of the CDN help inform the public about influence operations targeting them.   

Expert Network

Through our partnerships, network memberships, and working relations with European governments, we help connect responders with government agencies, policymakers and platforms 

  • European Policy and DSA Enforcement: CDN regularly informs European Commission bodies, and national regulators to hold platforms accountable for non-compliance.
  • Advocating Countermeasures: CDN ensures that lawmakers and policymakers remain informed of Information manipulation threats through timely reports and briefings. 
  • Platform Accountability: By providing platforms with our findings and monitoring their response, we are also working to identify systemic risks.

Capacity Building and Knowledge Sharing

  • Training Programs: A4E has trained over 100 practitioners in Influence operations detection frameworks, such as the DISARM Framework, and OSINT Methodology.
  • Expert Roundtables: Roundtables gathering practitioners from different countries, disciplines, and organisations to finding solutions to common issues. 
  • Empowering Civil Society: CDN offers training and onboarding programs for CSO practitioners, ensuring they are equipped with the tools and methodologies to contribute effectively.

Impact and Value

Operational Results: Takedown or geofencing of hundreds of harmful channels, identification of systemic risks on platform, and reduction in Information operation impact.

Ecosystem Recognition: Strengthened credibility and visibility for practitioners, journalists, and CSOs combating information manipulation.

Policy Influence: Evidence-based recommendations that drive improvements in platform accountability and enforcement measures.

Public Trust: Informing citizens with validated information, fostering trust in media and democratic institutions.

A Collaborative Hub for Expertise

The CDN connects a wide-ranging community of over 60 member organizations and 330 dedicated practitioners spanning open-source intelligence (OSINT), fact-checking, journalism, academia, strategic communication, and policy. This interdisciplinary network enables:

  • Cross-Sector Collaboration: Facilitating collaboration and knowledge-sharing between experts from media, academia, civil society, and regulatory bodies to tackle influence operations from multiple angles.

  • State-of-the-Art Methodologies: Combining the strengths of OSINT, fact-checking, journalism, academia to identify, analyze, and counteract complex influence operations.

     

  • Developing common tools and methodologies: Building tools and methodologies that can support the work of our members. 

Methodology

Since April 2024, the CDN has been developing a collaboration, monitoring, analysis, alerting, and response methodology. 

1. Collaborating

The CDN provides its members with a common workspace where they can find partners for their research, structure their collaborations, organise large-scale monitoring projects, discuss common issues, and share their findings. 

During major events and crisis, a crisis response platform is activated to gather practitioners in a common coordination workflow. This allows researchers to collaboratively build monitoring, work on cases together, and send out incident alerts. 

2. Monitoring

During collaborative projects, the CDN can provide their members with access to social listening tools and coordinate the creation of narrative and threat actor channel queries. 

3. Analysis

The CDN recommends its members to use the Actor, Behaviour, Content, Distribution, and Effect (ABCDE) framework for explaining information manipulation or influence operation cases. 

The network has a simple actor taxonomy that allows users to descriptively describe the relationship between a channel and a threat actor. 

We also recommend the use of the DISARM Framework to analyse threat actors behaviours. 

The narrative of content is analysed by breaking them down into meta narratives and their building blocks, the sub-narratives. 

Distribution is measured based on views, interactions, followers, and other similar indicators. 

Effect is measured based on if the incident managed to penetrate into authentic conversations, such as being shared by real social media users, discussed by politicians, or leading to demonstrations.  

4. Alerting

When an analysis is finished, the researchers are able to summarise their findings in an incident alert template. These one to two page alerts summarises the ABCDE analysis into a standardise format.  

5. Response

The incident alerts is sent to a mailing list of over 300 recipients, primarily consisting of government officials and journalists. We also utilise the European Commission Code of Conduct on Disinformation Rapid Response System during elections. 

Through direct engagement with social media platforms, advocacy groups, governments, and journalists, we work to disrupt influence operations. 

Featured CDN Reports

The Counter Disinformation Network has been active in and supported by the project Information Defence Alliance.

Name of the task: Information Defence Alliance

Project financed from the state budget under the competition of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland “Public Diplomacy 2024–2025 – the European dimension and counteracting disinformation”

Amount of funding: 473 900 PLN

Brief description of the task: The Information Defence Alliance project aimed to monitor and mitigate influence operations targeting France, Italy, Germany, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, and the Belarusian diaspora.

To do this, the project had three pillers:
1. researching influence operations,
2. inviting organisations and researchers from these countries to the CDN,
3. providing trainings to organisations to increase their capacity and share a common language.

Get in touch with us to find out more about the CDN!

For any questions you can email our team at info@alliance4europe.eu