The concept of disinformation

• Author: Jordan Hill - Malin Carlberg - Richard Procee - Iva Plasilova - Marion Goubet
• Pages: 14-22

Assessment of th e im plem en tat ion o f t he Code of Pract ice on Disinform at ion

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Dir ect or at e-Gen eral for Comm uni catio ns Net wor ks, Co nten t an d Tech nolog y

CHAPTER 3: THE CONCEPT OF DISINFORMATION

This section describes the wider context of disinformation as a concept. The text

presented below is based on the desk research and literature review undertaken as part

of the study. This chapter first describes the recent emergence of disinformation. The

latter section highlights some of the key challenges posed by this phenomenon.

Emergence of disinformation and its definitions

In the last 10 to 15 years societal discourse and the spread of information have changed

dramatically, triggered by the disruptive technological innovation of the internet, and

social media more specifically. Through such processes, dominant one-to-many

authoritative media channels – based on institutionally-embedded editorial functions –

have been complemented, challenged and in many ways replaced by many-to-many

social media platforms and a plethora of websites and fora for news aggregation and

opinion dissemination.

In this context, concepts such as “fake news” have emerged in the political debate.

Although these terms are often used ambiguously1, available data does suggest a

growing concern about the truthfulness and reliability of news and information spread

through social media2. In 2014, the rapid spread of disinformation online was identified

by the World Economic Forum as one of the 10 main trends in the modern society.3

Widespread social media use has resulted in a faster spread of disinformation, notably

during election periods, which has contributed to an increase in, and evolution of,

propaganda campaigns. The rise of social media use means differentiated political

messages can now be delivered much more easily and cheaply down to the level of the

individual voter. Individual-level data is collected from users when they connect via

computers or mobile applications and this data is then used during political campaigns.4

The challenge with reigning in the spread of fake news is to ensure processes of societal

opinion formation which accurately and sincerely reflect the opinions of the population,

whilst at the same time preventing the spread of malicious, inaccurate, and wilfully

damaging misinformation as well as covert attempts to prevent democratic behaviour.

News, by definition, is not false. It is the narratives that can be false and, although

advertised as news and containing parts of texts copied from newspapers or websites of

the same kind, incorporates false, inaccurate or misleading content. This false

1 Ott 2016 The age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the politics of debasement

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15295036.2016.1266686

2 Oxford Internet Institute, 2017, Computational propaganda worldwide: Executive summary. Working Paper 2017.11.

Available at: http://275rzy1ul4252pt1hv2dqyuf.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Casestudies-

ExecutiveSummary-1.pdf

3 World Economic Forum. Top 10 trends of 2014: 10. The rapid spread of misinformation online. Available at:

http://reports.weforum.org/outlook-14/top-ten-trends-category-page/10-the-rapid-spread-of-misinformation-

online/?doing_wp_cron=1571231213.2739710807800292968750

4 Wilfried Martens Center for European studies, 2018, Policy Brief, Political subversion in the age of social media.

Available at: https://martenscentre.eu/sites/default/files/publication-files/ces_policybrief_political-subversion-v4.pdf