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Knowledge Intensive Development Association

KIDA

KIDA was esbalished in Sept 2016.

Lobbying Activity

Response to Communication on fake news and online misinformation

8 Dec 2017

Knowledge-Intensive Development Association (www.KIDA.bg), as a representative body and cluster of some of the most prominent media intelligence and knowledge industry companies in Bulgaria welcomes the forthcoming non-binding Communication of the European Commission to address fake news and online misinformation as a very timely and needed initiative. To contribute to the wide stakeholder debate initiated by the Commission, we are pleased to provide below our experience in addressing fake news together with some more general recommendations and proposals for actions that the Commission could consider to include in its future strategy. Why is our position relevant? The Knowledge-Intensive Development Association is a cluster from Bulgaria, a major member of which is the group of A Data Pro - specialized in the provision of research/analysis, business news, media monitoring, content management and data services. The Group is among the top global leaders in media and business intelligence emerging from South East Europe with more than 17 years of experience and specialized expertise, particularly relevant to address the fake news phenomenon globally. One of the group’s members is SeeNews – a media platform and ‘one-stop shop’ for business news and market intelligence on Southeast Europe that helps businesses and governments make informed decision. Another member is Media Monitor which is the fastest growing SEE press clipping and media monitoring agency with print, broadcast, online and social media coverage, including all national, regional and periodical issues, more than 2000 Internet websites and 20+ broadcast sources. We also have A Data Pro as a 400+ employment agency, offering multilingual expertise of media analysts, data scientists and risk and compliance professionals in 40+ languages, covering over 80 countries globally. We have also incorporated the feedback of Identrics - a software company, specialized in the development of artificial intelligence for automated data processing and analysis, relevant inter alia for fake news detection. The Information Society Development Foundation, as one of our not-for-profit members, has also provided their input. As a result, we are now presenting an opinion, synchronized with multiple stakeholders and from a great variety of viewpoints. The portfolio of services we represent range from journalism and content creation, through media clipping, to advanced solutions such as measurement of the image/reputation of brands and public figures (e.g. politicians), assessment of the perception of specific topics in the social and traditional media, evaluation of communications and their impact etc. All this work can be relevant for fake news in many ways, especially considering the fact that we utilize complementary technologies (such as semantically based auto-detection) with human expertise and involvement to assess the degree of reliability and trustworthiness of the information. We are also in the process of creating a Media database for the whole Southeastern region, including objective system for multi-factor impact assessment of traditional and social media sources and a methodology to assess the level of trustworthiness of media sources. Finally, we have direct first-hand experience with the negative influence of bad media on the democratic processes in the country. Unfortunately, the media environment in Bulgaria is seriously deteriorated and compromised in comparison with any other EU country and we are eager to change that. Fast. We witness how fake news pose a serious threat to the national security and the very foundations of our democratic societies and are willing to do our best to help EU take action. Sooner. Thank you for considering our input. Please find it attached in the file below.
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Response to Fairness in platform-to-business relations

22 Nov 2017

We are a Cluster of SMEs and large enterprises from Bulgaria specialized in the provision of IT, data, information and knowledge-based services. As such, the members of the Cluster have been acting on both sides of the ‘platform-to-business’ relationship - as an online platform provider and a user of other platforms’ services. From our experience, the online platforms are an important tool for businesses in today’s digital economy to remain competitive and promote innovative products and services in an open and neutral online environment. In this context, we think that a potential binding EU legislation on the ‘platform-to-business’ relations could put obstacles to the current competitive and innovation-friendly online environment and would be against the principle of proportionality. However, to address some of the problems identified in the inception impact assessment and to avoid fragmentation of the EU single digital market with some Member States adopting stricter legislation, we could support the promotion of EU soft law (non-binding) in this area to be accepted by the online platforms as a means of self-regulation (option 1). In particular, we are against potential EU binding legislation in this field (either less detailed under options 2 or very prescriptive and enforceable under option 3) for a number of reasons, described in detail in the attached file.
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