The monthly report from the European Digital Media Observatory, EDMO, highlights, among the misinformation stories, the floods that occurred in Valencia, Spain, at the end of October, named “Spanish floods of the century”. A large part of these pieces claimed that the storm was intentionally caused using alleged weather modification techniques, or that the flooding was the result of the government’s deliberate demolition of dams, another false narrative.
The Maldita.es project has verified many of these suspicious information. See this example
The war in Middle East was the most covered topic by fact-checkers in Europe in October, followed by topics related to climate change, with a special focus on climate accidents that occurred inside and outside Europe. The topic of war in Ukraine doubled to 10% of the articles checked. And climate change rose from 7% to 11%.
This assessment was based on information provided by 33 fact-checking organizations from the European Digital Media Observatory, EDMO, which reviewed 1,812 articles in October 2024.
