Investigations

May 25, 2026 By Theofile Bloudanis The “Sandy” case, or “Sandygate”, in Cyprus quickly moved from the realm of a political and judicial scandal to that of a controversy over the reliability of the digital evidence linked to the investigation that “exposed” the scandal. The accusations made public by journalist Makarios Drousiotis, a candidate in […]

May 25, 2026 By Thanos Sitistas Behind seemingly harmless videos of young Chinese women speaking fluent Greek, sharing everyday moments, cultural stories and cheerful messages about China, a more complex influence operation appears to be taking shape. A network of Greek-language social media accounts, some officially labelled by Meta as China state-controlled media, has built

As Greece approaches the August 2026 EU deadline for replacing old identity cards with the new biometric ID-1 format, public debate has been accompanied by a wave of misleading claims and conspiracy-driven narratives concerning the new identity system, disseminated by both individual citizens and political actors.

Polarisation is being exploited repeatedly in political rhetoric and forms the bedrock of much of the disinformation circulating in Malta and other places, not least in the United States.

Through this report, by focusing on Facebook, MedDMO demonstrates that deepfake-powered scams have emerged on social media platforms in Greece. Since late 2022, fact-checkers have identified several cases of fraudulent advertisements using AI-generated content, representing a notable evolution from traditional online fraud tactics.

Multiple false narratives about COVID-19 vaccines and their alleged harmful effects have spread across Cyprus, including fabricated stories about celebrity deaths caused by vaccines, distorted research findings about cancer survival rates and false claims about vaccines’ effect on behaviour. This report examines how some of these claims originated and made their way across the country.

This report examines a disinformation campaign promoting various unproven alternative medicine therapies and substances as miraculous cures for serious medical conditions. These narratives exploit people’s desire for simple, natural solutions to complex health problems while deliberately omitting critical safety information and scientific evidence.

In 2000, the Maltese government granted a private company a 99-year lease to develop two abandoned sites steeped in history on Malta’s north-eastern coast, including Manoel Island, a small island measuring just 0.3km , home to a magnificent fort and lazzaretto and nestled within one of Malta’s natural harbours.

Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, disinformation about vaccines remains widespread across Greece. Some falsely claim that vaccines are linked to aggressive forms of cancer, others distort studies to link them to genetic disorders and sudden deaths. This report examines some of the more prominent and problematic claims.

In a country that suffers from deep polarisation, protest for political accountability is dismissed as a partisan act. Malta’s ruling party, the Labour Party, particularly capitalised on this in early 2025, when civil society fought against the magisterial inquiry reform bill that was widely regarded as an attack on the rule of law. By propagating the narrative that civil society is an extremist faction of the Opposition, the government and its media have fostered social division as a means of exerting control.