Building a trustworthy social media sphere: countering disinformation on social media for young Europeans

The EU is offering a grant opportunity titled "Building a trustworthy social media sphere: countering disinformation on social media for young Europeans." This initiative primarily targets young individuals aged 15-30, aiming to enhance media and digital literacy while addressing disinformation challenges in the digital landscape.

Eligible applicants include civil society organizations, NGOs, universities, research institutes, media literacy professionals, influencers, and information integrity experts. Consortia are required, emphasizing the importance of collaboration among various organizations to promote effective outcomes.

The funding type is classified as a grant under PPPA Project Grants, specifically designed to support pilot projects and preparatory actions. The total budget for this initiative is approximately €5.985 million for the year 2025, with the expectation of funding two projects, each receiving about €3 million. This places the funding within the €1M–€5M range per project.

Geographically, the projects must ensure coverage across at least thirteen EU Member States, fostering a broad European presence. The call encourages the development and demonstration of innovative media literacy campaigns and the creation of multilingual content tailored to the interests of young people.

Applications must follow a single-stage submission process, with a planned opening date on September 30, 2025, and a deadline of December 2, 2025. The call's primary goal is to raise awareness of information integrity issues and empower young people to navigate online information critically. It seeks to establish a participatory process that involves young Europeans in content development, ensuring relevance and engagement.

The projects are expected to produce youth-oriented multimedia content addressing threats to information integrity, implement a comprehensive media literacy campaign across EU Member States, and comply with ethical standards. The expected outcomes include increased awareness of information integrity risks, enhanced collaborative networks among stakeholders, and improved media literacy skills among young Europeans.

Overall, this grant opportunity aims to contribute to a more resilient digital sphere in Europe by equipping young individuals with the skills necessary to interact responsibly with online content.

The EU Funding & Tenders Portal presents a call for proposals titled "Building a trustworthy social media sphere: countering disinformation on social media for young Europeans" under the Pilot Projects & Preparation Actions (PPPA) Programme. The call identifier is PPPA-2025-DISINFORMATION-YOUNG, and it falls under the PPPA-PJG PPPA Project Grants action type. The Model Grant Agreement type is PPPA Action Grant Budget-Based [PPPA-AG].

This is a forthcoming call with a single-stage submission process. The planned opening date is 30 September 2025, and the deadline for submissions is 02 December 2025 at 17:00:00 Brussels time.

The overall objective of this call is to foster awareness and resilience among young Europeans regarding information integrity risks. It aims to strengthen their media and digital literacy skills, equipping them with the knowledge to navigate the online information space safely and critically, enabling them to participate in society as active and informed citizens. This will be achieved through the development of engaging, multilingual content tailored to the consumption patterns and interests of young Europeans. A key evaluation criterion is ensuring broad coverage of at least thirteen EU Member States.

Specific objectives include:

Involving young Europeans and influencers in a participatory process to create engaging content on the risks threatening information integrity. This content should provide ways to identify, understand, and counter such threats, promoting critical thinking among young Europeans aged 15–30.

Disseminating content across at least thirteen EU Member States through a media literacy campaign that leverages creative storytelling by mobilizing influencers, who will work in full editorial independence, supported by digital media and artificial intelligence.

Fostering new collaborations between information integrity professionals (e.g., fact-checkers, media literacy practitioners, civil society organizations) and influencers, enabling them to join forces and learn from each other on ways to promote media literacy and critical thinking among young Europeans. These collaborations should also aim to support the creation of a virtual community allowing influencers to easily connect with fact-checkers, media literacy practitioners, and other information integrity professionals across Europe.

Collecting and sharing lessons learned on how influencers can integrate information integrity best practices in their work, including by raising the trustworthiness of their own content. This should involve an evaluation of the reach, impact, and effectiveness of the conducted campaigns by the consortium partners.

The scope of the call involves funding two innovative projects that implement the following activities in all covered Member States:

Design a participatory process involving young Europeans and influencers: The consortium will design and implement a participatory process to allow young Europeans to share their ideas, questions, and concerns related to the online information space and information integrity. This involves them in the creation and dissemination of engaging content to address information integrity and safety online. The objective is to ensure strong involvement of young Europeans as well as influencers at all stages, from design to delivery. This aims to ensure that the multimedia content, and the campaigns designed to disseminate it, are as targeted and relevant as possible to young Europeans’ interests while also leveraging on the experience, knowledge, and follower base of influencers.

Produce youth-oriented content related to the threats to information integrity and ways to counter them: The consortium will produce engaging multilingual multimedia content that caters to the needs and preferences and consumption habits of 15- to 30-year-olds across all covered Member States.

Develop a wide, cross-national and inclusive media literacy campaign: The consortium will design and implement a comprehensive digital media campaign that will ensure an EU-wide and as broad as possible dissemination of the multimedia content produced. The campaign will also serve to maintain an overview of all activities related to the project and to collect relevant metrics on reach and impact (audiences reached via the different channels used, number and quality of interactions with the campaign content, etc.). The campaign’s key messages will support the objective of this Call for proposals, which is to promote critical thinking and responsible online behaviour among young Europeans aged 15–30 by helping them identify, understand and counter the mechanisms that threaten information integrity.

Ensure compliance with ethical guidelines and standards on information integrity: The consortium will apply ethical guidelines and standards on information integrity in their partnerships with influencers and in the whole process for producing and disseminating multimedia content. This will ensure that the output is accurate, trustworthy, ethical, and privacy-respecting.

The expected impacts of the projects are:

Increased awareness about risks related to information integrity and boosting media literacy skills through high-quality, influencer- and youth-led content: By producing compelling, multilingual content fronted by trusted and relatable creators, projects will measurably boost young Europeans’ ability to recognise, analyse and counter information integrity risks including misleading information—evidenced by clear reach, engagement and learning metrics across at least thirteen Member States.

New and lasting cross-sector, cross-border collaborations: The creation of new partnerships between influencers, information integrity professionals including fact-checkers, media literacy professionals and/or civil society organisations will allow each community to enrich its expertise with new insights, while expanding its geographical reach. Importantly, the consortium should aim to create a community that has a lasting impact beyond the duration of the project. To this extent, the funded projects, once awarded, shall establish contact with each other and seek active exchange.

Heighten standards of information integrity, especially among the community of influencers: The involvement of influencers and young Europeans in a campaign raising awareness about risks related to information integrity and good practices to counter them is expected to raise related standards both within the community involved in content creation, and beyond.

Positive social and well-being outcomes: Greater awareness of manipulative online content among young Europeans will also contribute to mitigate certain mental health pressures, curb polarisation and encourage socially responsible behaviour online, contributing to a more resilient European digital sphere.

Sustainable knowledge-sharing: The project will leave a legacy by codifying successful content, formats, and dissemination methods through an evaluation system with relevant metrics.

Conditions for participation include:

Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout are described in section 5 of the call document and Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.

Eligible Countries: Described in section 6 of the call document.

Other Eligible Conditions: Described in section 6 of the call document.

Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: Described in section 7 of the call document.

Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes are described in section 8 of the call document and the Online Manual.

Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring, and thresholds are described in section 9 of the call document.

Evaluation and award: The indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement is described in section 4 of the call document.

Legal and financial set-up of the grants is described in section 10 of the call document.

The call document and annexes include:

Call document

Application form templates (available in the Submission System)

Model Grant Agreements (MGA) (General MGA)

Additional documents:

COMMISSION DECISION of 18.3.2025 on the financing of pilot projects and preparatory actions in the field of "Communications Networks, Content and Technology" and on the adoption of the work programme for 2025

EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

The total budget for this topic in 2025 is EUR 5,985,000. It is anticipated that two grants will be awarded.

Partner search announcements can be viewed and edited on the portal. LEARs, Account Administrators, and self-registrants can publish partner requests for open and forthcoming topics.

The submission system is planned to be opened on the date stated on the topic header.

Applicants are advised to read all provisions carefully before preparing their application. Support and FAQs are available through the Funding & Tenders Portal.

This call for proposals aims to combat disinformation among young Europeans by funding projects that create engaging, multilingual content and media literacy campaigns. The focus is on empowering young people to critically assess online information and promoting responsible online behavior. The EU seeks to fund two projects that will involve young Europeans and influencers in the content creation process, ensuring the content is relevant and impactful. The projects should also foster collaboration between influencers and information integrity professionals, creating a lasting community that promotes media literacy and critical thinking. The goal is to increase awareness of information integrity risks, improve media literacy skills, and contribute to a more resilient digital sphere in Europe.

Eligible Applicant Types: The call is open to consortia. The text mentions the creation of new partnerships between influencers, information integrity professionals including fact-checkers, media literacy professionals and/or civil society organisations. This suggests that eligible applicants could include influencers, fact-checkers, media literacy practitioners, civil society organisations, and potentially other types of organizations that can contribute to the objectives of the call. The call also mentions LEARs, Account Administrators or self-registrants can publish partner requests for open and forthcoming topics after logging into this Portal, as well as any user having an active public Person profile.

Funding Type: The funding type is a grant, specifically a PPPA Project Grant (PPPA-PJG) and a PPPA Action Grant Budget-Based [PPPA-AG].

Consortium Requirement: A consortium is required. The call emphasizes the importance of cross-sector and cross-border collaborations and the creation of new partnerships.

Beneficiary Scope (Geographic Eligibility): The geographic eligibility is focused on the EU, as the call aims to foster awareness and resilience of young Europeans and requires broad coverage of at least thirteen EU Member States. The activities are to be implemented in all covered Member States.

Target Sector: The target sectors are media literacy, digital literacy, information integrity, communications, technology, and education. The call focuses on countering disinformation on social media, particularly among young Europeans.

Mentioned Countries: The call explicitly mentions the requirement of covering at least thirteen EU Member States, implying that the focus is on the European Union.

Project Stage: The project stage appears to be focused on development and implementation, with an emphasis on creating and disseminating content, developing media literacy campaigns, and fostering collaborations. The call aims to fund two innovative projects, suggesting that the projects should be beyond the initial idea stage.

Funding Amount: The total budget for the topic is EUR 5,985,000. The call seeks to fund two innovative projects, so the indicative funding per project would be approximately EUR 2,992,500.

Application Type: The application type is an open call, with a single-stage submission process.

Nature of Support: Beneficiaries will receive money in the form of a grant to support their projects.

Application Stages: The application process is single-stage.

Success Rates: The indicative number of grants is 2, but the total number of applications is not mentioned, so the success rate cannot be determined.

Co-funding Requirement: The document does not explicitly mention a co-funding requirement.

Summary:

This call for proposals, titled "Building a trustworthy social media sphere: countering disinformation on social media for young Europeans," aims to address the issue of information integrity risks among young Europeans. The primary objective is to foster awareness and resilience by strengthening media and digital literacy skills. The call seeks to fund two innovative projects that will develop engaging, multilingual content tailored to the consumption patterns and interests of young Europeans aged 15 to 30.

The selected projects are expected to:

1. Design a participatory process involving young Europeans and influencers to gather ideas and concerns related to online information and involve them in content creation and dissemination.
2. Produce youth-oriented multimedia content addressing threats to information integrity and ways to counter them.
3. Develop a wide, cross-national, and inclusive media literacy campaign to disseminate the content across at least thirteen EU Member States, promoting critical thinking and responsible online behavior.
4. Ensure compliance with ethical guidelines and standards on information integrity in all partnerships and content production processes.

The call emphasizes the importance of cross-sector and cross-border collaborations, encouraging partnerships between influencers, information integrity professionals, media literacy practitioners, and civil society organizations. The projects should also aim to create a lasting community and foster knowledge-sharing.

The funding is provided through PPPA Project Grants, with a total budget of EUR 5,985,000 allocated to fund two projects. The application process is single-stage, with a planned opening date of September 30, 2025, and a deadline of December 2, 2025. Eligible applicants are expected to form consortia and implement activities across EU Member States. The call aims to contribute to a more resilient European digital sphere by empowering young Europeans to navigate the online information space safely and critically.