Climate Disinformation & Vulnerable Communities Partner — Media Literacy for Democratic Resilience

A Sud is seeking partners for HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-DEMOCRACY-10 (Digital and Media Literacy for Democratic Resilience). We offer a specific and grounded contribution: the link between climate disinformation and reduced civic participation in local adaptation processes, working directly with non-specialist communities in urban peripheral contexts. We are looking for consortia with strong academic leads in communication science or NLP.

Full description: A Sud Ecologia e Cooperazione APS (Rome, Italy) offers an underexplored but critical angle for DEMOCRACY-10: the relationship between exposure to climate disinformation and weakened participation in local democratic and adaptation decision-making.

Our specific contribution:

• Climate literacy for non-specialist communities: We have designed and delivered non-formal environmental education programmes in Rome's peripheral neighbourhoods, targeting communities disproportionately exposed to distorted climate information and simultaneously most affected by climate risks.

• Worked examples of disinformation impact: We can bring qualitative and participatory evidence of how misinformation about climate risks affects communities' willingness to engage in public participation processes — a perspective purely technical or NLP-focused partners cannot provide.

• Informal education and community engagement: We can design and pilot media literacy interventions for groups typically excluded from academic-led research: elderly residents, migrant communities, low-income households in urban peripheries.

• Civil society networks: Our membership in CAN Europe and international advocacy networks positions us to connect research findings with wider civil society dissemination channels across Europe.