According to this centre for the study of communication sciences, which is part of (ISCTE-IUL), and which entered into a partnership with the National Electoral Commission to detect fake news during the European election period of 9 June, none of these cases is, however, a typical example of disinformation. The reason has to do with the fact that, in the first incident, it has not been possible to fully ascertain what happened and, in the second, although the fact (the bomb threat) is true, the justification that it was a former party member claiming payment of a debt was, after all, satirical content, republished as genuine. According to a report by MediaLab, which Lusa had access to, the case of the alleged assault on the child "generated a cycle of information and subsequent disinformation, which increased polarisation on social media regarding the problem of immigration". This incident is particularly complex and its newsworthiness and sharing are, according to the authors of the report, "a case study that can help to understand the dynamics of disinformation" during election time. The contours of the case are still not clear, with the entity that denounced it admitting to an "error in disclosure" and an enquiry by the Public Prosecutor's Office still not concluded. The original news, which reported an attempted "lynching" of a Nepalese child by colleagues at a school in the Lisbon region in a racist and xenophobic context, was the subject of a note from the Ministry of Education the following day, denying its occurrence, at least in the terms and place in which the complaint had been made. The MediaLab report states that "the media reported the case based on information that later proved to be inaccurate and this allowed anonymous users and political agents to take advantage of it to promote their own political agendas". The whole case is "a paradigmatic example of how the competition for attention between the media leads them to reproduce news immediately without a 'double-check', which is then used to increase the polarisation of political discourse", say the MediaLab researchers. For them, the analysis of social media and networks regarding this case proves that "immigration continues to be one of the main trends in disinformation in Europe and of mobilisation of political discourse in Portugal, two weeks before the elections for the European Parliament". According to the report, there were 94,885 interactions (sum of 'likes', shares, comments) on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter/X, referring to the case of the Nepalese child between 14 May (date of the first news item) and 23 May. As for the second incident – the bomb threat at the Chega headquarters allegedly carried out by a former member – is considered by the authors of the report to be "imposter content". This occurs when someone uses irony or sarcasm, but many users do not understand and republish it as true, thus giving it disinformation potential. The digital newspaper Polígrafo denied the news. The researchers detected "at least five shares of the fabricated news", some of which had "typical characteristics of humour and satire pages, including the account that first published the image". Depending on the shares made, the satirical tone of the original publication can be lost, which, according to the MediaLab researchers, was actually the case here. In all, the five accounts that published the satirical news (including a parody account of Chega leader Rita Matias) obtained 1,333 interactions and a total of 73,040 views. Read Also: Europeias. Comícios e contactos com eleitores no terceiro de campanha (Portuguese version)