Last week, the 6th Multidisciplinary International Symposium on Disinformation in Open Online Media (MISDOOM) took place at the University of Münster. The conference was organised in collaboration by the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) and the Department of Communication. The Symposium brought together international researchers from multiple backgrounds, such as communication science, computer science, computational science, political communication, journalism, and media studies.

The keynotes were held by two international researchers: Tine Ustad Figenschou, Professor of journalism at Oslo Metropolitan University (Oslo Met), and Walter Quattrociocchi, Full Professor at Sapienza University of Rome.

Other invited Speakers included Jean-Christophe Boucher, Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and the department of Political Science at the University of Calgary; Jānis Karlsbergs, senior policy and publications manager in the NATO StratCom Centre of Excellence based in Riga, Latvia; Kyoko Kuwahara specializing in public diplomacy, strategic communications, disinformations and soft power strategies; and Dr. Ofer Fridman, senior lecturer in war Studies, King’s College London and Director of Operations at Sympodium Institute for Strategic Communications.

Together with many other speakers and participants, they successfully discussed the phenomenon of disinformation in several panels which were led by different chairs over the last three days. Furthermore, the conference included a workshop for doctoral students, where doctoral projects were presented in small groups and discussed with experienced mentors for the first time.

The conference concluded with an award ceremony. The Best Paper Award was given to Anatoliy Gruzd, Philip Mai and Felipe Soares for their paper titled “To Share or Not to Share: Randomized Controlled Study of Misinformation Warning Labels on Social Media” and the Best Presentation Award was given to Felipe Soares and Cassian Osborne-Carey for their contribution titled “Betrayal by democracy: how pro-Bolsonaro multimedia content on Facebook explains the 8^th of January insurrection in Brazil”.

Overall, the conference was a great success, shaped by intensive exchanges and significant scientific outcomes.

From left to right: Jānis Karlsbergs, Kyoko Kuwahara, Jean-Christophe Boucher, Ofer Fridman and Thorsten Quandt.