Creative Commons

This dissertation is written as a part of the MSc in e-Business and Digital Marketing at the International Hellenic University. By this Master Thesis, we conduct an analysis for one of the most important issues that our society faces during the last years, misinformation. Misinformation is not a totally new concept, however, in the recent past, it has become a major topic for discussion and gained the attention of the research community since it spreads through the internet globally. Misinformation has become an important problem that our society faces during the last years aiming mostly at political interference. This thesis investigates the concept of misinformation with the European Elections (EU) 2019 as a case study. First, we explore the Code of Practices published by the European Commission to address the spread of online misinformation and its compliance status with online platforms, leading social networks, and the advertising industry. Second, we analyze the social media profiles of main political figures in the elections in terms of misinformation. Finally, we investigate the previously fact-checked articles related to EU elections 2019 by using state-of-the-art and open-source fact-checking tools. We employ open source free tools.