Suchergebnisse

Along with other forms of hybrid threat, the phenomenon of disinformation is causing increasing concern to national governments, and also to the international community. The exposure of citizens to widespread disinformation represents a major challenge for civil society and authorities, for researchers and journalists. Open democratic societies depend on public debates that allow well-informed citizens to express their willingness through free and fair political processes. The media plays an essential role in providing information that enables citizens to form their own opinions and to engage effectively and actively in the life of democratic society. In the European Union, democracy is based on the existence of free and independent media. Facilitated access to diverse, quality information can increase participation in democratic processes, giving everyone the opportunity to get involved. Today, the Internet has greatly increased not only the volume and variety of news to that citizens have access, but has also profoundly changed the way citizens access and manage news. In this article, we will briefly present the European approach to the phenomenon of disinformation, widely reflected especially in the research carried out under the auspices of the European authorities, but we will also review the main studies available on this subject.

"Misinformation can spread like wildfire online, reaching people worldwide. Misinformation is driving increasing political polarization, endangering public health and communities, and increasing public distrust of the media, government, and other institutions. People are left unsure of what to believe and who to trust"--

Hardly a day had passed after the government unveiled its initial draft of the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023 when critics descended upon it. 'Hey Peasants, Your Opinions Hell, your facts Are Fake News', ...

This study aims to explore the social and demographic determinants of narrative influence in Romania, with a specific focus on how disinformation campaigns are tailored to different age groups based on their digital behavior. By examining the intersection of social media consumption habits, cultural biases, and socio-economic factors, this paper seeks to contribute to the growing body of literature on developing more effective strategies to combat the spread of disinformation and protect the integrity of societal resilience in Romania's digital landscape.

With the prevalence of disinformation geared to instill doubt rather than clarity, Creating Chaos Online unmasks disinformation when it attempts to pass as deliberation in the public sphere and distorts the democratic processes. Asta Zelenkauskaitė finds that repeated tropes justifying Russian trolling were found to circulate across not only all analyzed media platforms' comments but also across two analyzed sociopolitical contexts suggesting the orchestrated efforts behind messaging. Through a dystopian vision of publics that are expected to navigate in the sea of uncertain both authentic and orchestrated content, pushed by human and nonhuman actors, Creating Chaos Online offers a concept of post-publics. The idea of post-publics is reflected within the continuum of treatment of public, counter public, and anti-public. This book argues that affect-instilled arguments used in public deliberation in times of uncertainty, along with whataboutism constitute a playbook for chaos online.

This essay examines the role of disinformation in the Indian general election of 2019. The findings are presented against the background of previous work on the role of digital media in Indian politics. The essay uses 25 in-depth interviews among ordinary Indians to probe their level of awareness about so-called 'fake news'. It also examines their behavior in seeking news and sharing political information and their views about the digital campaign strategies of leaders and parties. The interviewees were concerned about the increasing role of religious extremism online. Yet they were also strongly aware of the role of disinformation campaigns and had strategies for working around being misled by information shared on social media. The essay concludes by assessing how disinformation and online extremism are likely to have affected the 2019 election, and makes comparisons with Modi's election in 2014 and with other leaders.

It is widely believed that the impact of fake news, internet rumors, hoaxes, deceptive memes etc. are spilling into the physical world from the virtual world. In fact, social media has had a significant role in the origination and spread of such deceptive communication, as social media users often lack awareness of the intentional manipulation of online content and are easily tricked into believing unverifiable content. In an increasingly polarized world where social media and the internet have pushed people to live inside "echo chambers" and "filter bubbles," people consciously and unconsciously are exposed only to content that reinforce their confirmation bias. In such a scenario, people only agree with content that aligns with their preexisting beliefs and disagree with or label as "fake" content that is opposed to their worldview. This paper proposes to study the psychological differences that cause people to either agree or disagree with such prejudiced and ideologically oriented online disinformation.

Online disinformation is considered a major challenge for modern democracies. It is widely understood as misleading content produced to generate profits, pursue political goals, or maliciously deceive. Our starting point is the assumption that some countries are more resilient to online disinformation than others. To understand what conditions influence this resilience, we choose a comparative cross-national approach. In the first step, we develop a theoretical framework that presents these country conditions as theoretical dimensions. In the second step, we translate the dimensions into quantifiable indicators that allow us to measure their significance on a comparative cross-country basis. In the third part of the study, we empirically examine eighteen Western democracies. A cluster analysis yields three country groups: one group with high resilience to online disinformation (including the Northern European systems, for instance) and two country groups with low resilience (including the polarized Southern European countries and the United States). In the final part, we discuss the heuristic value of the framework for comparative political communication research in the age of information pollution.

Datafication and the use of algorithmic systems increasingly blur distinctions between policy fields. In the financial sector, for example, algorithms are used in credit scoring, money has become transactional data sought after by large data-driven companies, while financial technologies (FinTech) are emerging as a locus of information warfare. To grasp the context specificity of algorithmic governance and the assumptions on which its evaluation within different domains is based, we comparatively study the sociotechnical imaginaries of algorithmic governance in European Union (EU) policy on online disinformation and FinTech. We find that sociotechnical imaginaries prevalent in EU policy documents on disinformation and FinTech are highly divergent. While the first can be characterized as an algorithm-facilitated attempt to return to the presupposed status quo (absence of manipulation) without a defined future imaginary, the latter places technological innovation at the centre of realizing a globally competitive Digital Single Market.

Datafication and the use of algorithmic systems increasingly blur distinctions between policy fields. In the financial sector, for example, algorithms are used in credit scoring, money has become transactional data sought after by large data-driven companies, while financial technologies (FinTech) are emerging as a locus of information warfare. To grasp the context specificity of algorithmic governance and the assumptions on which its evaluation within different domains is based, we comparatively study the sociotechnical imaginaries of algorithmic governance in European Union (EU) policy on online disinformation and FinTech. We find that sociotechnical imaginaries prevalent in EU policy documents on disinformation and FinTech are highly divergent. While the first can be characterized as an algorithm-facilitated attempt to return to the presupposed status quo (absence of manipulation) without a defined future imaginary, the latter places technological innovation at the centre of realizing a globally competitive Digital Single Market.

Datafication and the use of algorithmic systems increasingly blur distinctions between policy fields. In the financial sector, for example, algorithms are used in credit scoring, money has become transactional data sought after by large data-driven companies, while financial technologies (FinTech) are emerging as a locus of information warfare. To grasp the context specificity of algorithmic governance and the assumptions on which its evaluation within different domains is based, we comparatively study the sociotechnical imaginaries of algorithmic governance in European Union (EU) policy on online disinformation and FinTech. We find that sociotechnical imaginaries prevalent in EU policy documents on disinformation and FinTech are highly divergent. While the first can be characterized as an algorithm-facilitated attempt to return to the presupposed status quo (absence of manipulation) without a defined future imaginary, the latter places technological innovation at the centre of realizing a globally competitive Digital Single Market.

This article considers legislative approaches to online disinformation in the European Union (EU) and identifies how shifting approaches could undermine applicable fundamental rights standards in the disinformation field. The problem of online disinformation – and its disruptive effects on European elections – has attracted extensive scrutiny at the EU institutional and Member State level. Since 2018, Union institutions have pursued self-regulatory measures for disinformation and have explicitly refrained from including this content in the EU's intermediary liability regime. A key justification for this approach has been that disinformation generally includes lawful content and that restrictions on lawful content may undermine the right to freedom of expression. As this article maps, however, standards are shifting in the EU legal context regarding online intermediary responsibilities to limit the dissemination of content containing disinformation. This is not only evidenced by a diverse set of Member State laws designed to address misleading electoral communications, but also in several provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) which have potential applications in this area. Drawing from relevant case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), this article provides a distillation of key European standards regarding how EU and Member State laws to combat disinformation must ensure compatibility with the right to freedom of expression. This article further considers whether – in light of these standards – divergent legislative approaches to online disinformation in the EU could undermine fundamental rights.
Disinformation, Freedom of Expression, CFR, Free Elections, Democracy

Electoral disinformation is feared to variously undermine democratic trust by inflaming incorrect negative beliefs about the fairness of elections, or to shore up dictators by creating falsely positive ones. Recent studies of political misperceptions, however, suggest that disinformation has at best minimal effects on beliefs. In this article, we investigate the drivers of public perceptions and misperceptions of election fairness. We build on theories of rational belief updating and motivated reasoning, and link public opinion data from 82 national elections with expert survey data on disinformation and de facto electoral integrity. We show that, overall, people arrive at largely accurate perceptions, but that disinformation campaigns are indeed associated with less accurate and more polarized beliefs about election fairness. This contributes a cross-nationally comparative perspective to studies of (dis)information processing and belief updating, as well as attitude formation and trust surrounding highly salient political institutions such as elections.

The month-long student-led mass movement that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was marred not only with violence, but also a surge in mis- and disinformation.