Teaching Resilience To Disinformation A National And European

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 5, 2025, 9:34 PM

teaching resilience to disinformation a national and european

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 11, Article number: 101 (2024) Cite this article As social media is a key conduit for the distribution of disinformation, much of the literature on disinformation in elections has been focused on the internet and global social media platforms. Literature on societal and media trust has also grown in recent years. Yet, disinformation is not limited to global platforms or the internet, traditional media outlets in many European countries act as vehicles of disinformation often under the direction of the government. Moreover, the connection between trust and resilience to disinformation has been less discussed. This article is aimed at tackling the question of what makes a country vulnerable to or resilient against online disinformation.

It argues that a society’s information resilience can be viewed as a combination of structural characteristics, features of its knowledge-distribution institutions including its media system, and the activities and capabilities of its citizens. The article makes this argument by describing these dimensions in four European case countries, based on comparable statistics and document analyses. The results indicate that European-wide strategies do not uniformly strengthen national resilience against disinformation and that anti-disinformation strategies need to be anchored in targeted assessments of the state of information resilience at the national... Such assessments are central, particularly to understanding citizens’ information needs in key democratic events such as elections. Defined as purposely created false content, disinformation has been one of the most urgent political problems worldwide in the past decade. The rapid spread of disinformation that has been made possible by fast-developing technologies has prompted countries to react and address this challenge, with varied levels of success.

Some strategies to combat disinformation have achieved more impact than others, yet there is no silver bullet in effectively wringing disinformation out of the communication ecosystem. The local context, a combination of factors including the health of the media system, the level of education, the quality of political debate, and the type of access to information, plays a major role... Success in staving off the effects of disinformation is affected to a large extent by information resilience defined as a society’s ability to (1) secure trustworthy societal systems and structures, (2) support related knowledge... At the center of this concept of information resilience is a healthy level of trust (Staender and Humprecht, 2022). Public Education Forum a NAFO Initiative Imagine this: A parent scrolling through social media comes across a post claiming that a new law will force children to receive an experimental vaccine without parental consent.

Outraged, they share the post. It spreads like wildfire, stoking fear and anger—except, the claim is completely false. This is how disinformation operates, influencing elections, public health, and trust in democratic institutions. Disinformation isn’t just a problem for politicians and journalists. Head of National Institute for Intelligence Studies at "Mihai Viteazul" National Intelligence Academy The tension created between protecting democratic societies from external manipulation while preserving open discourse and critical inquiry that are fundamental to democratic systems has become more of a global concern throughout this past decade.

A number of questions arise from here: How can educational interventions address the psychological vulnerabilities that make individuals susceptible to disinformation? What specific skills and literacies should be integrated into educational programs to build proactive defenses against information manipulation? How can education systems balance prebunking approaches with maintaining democratic values while countering foreign information warfare? If ways to build a resilient society against disinformation have been a topic of investigation in your research or practice, you might want to check an article I recently published in International Journal of... One after the others, all the articles of the special édition of thé IJICI on the topic "Towards an European strategic Intel. Culture" , are published !

Looking forward the complete edition in June ! The main problem here is to define disinformation and how to distinguish it from information. I may suggest that the former is not supported by evidence, while the latter is. But the what is evidence? Facts? Then any of us will hardly be able to observe facts first hand.

Therefore in most cases with evidence we mean reported facts, which can be hardly be considered evident. So we all go back to the main issue about what is observable AND measurable … what is neither is not evidence Member of the Advisory Council - European Digital Media Observatory You have full access to this open access article A Correction to this article was published on 31 May 2025 This article addresses the critical issue of societal resilience in the face of disinformation, particularly in highly digitized democratic societies.

Recognizing the escalating impact of disinformation as a significant threat to societal security, the study conducts a scoping review of the literature from 2018 to 2022 to explore the current understanding and approaches to... The core contribution of the article is the development of a preliminary typological framework that addresses key elements and issue areas relevant to societal resilience to disinformation. This framework spans multiple dimensions, including legal/regulatory, educational, political/governance, psychological/social-psychological, and technological domains. By synthesizing existing knowledge and filling identified gaps, the framework aims to serve as a foundational tool for empirical analyses and the enhancement of resilience strategies. One of the innovative aspects of the proposed framework is its potential to be transformed into a computable and customizable tool. This tool would measure the maturity level of various countermeasures against disinformation, thereby providing a practical methodology for planning and implementing effective democratic responses to disinformation.

The article emphasizes the importance of this framework as both a conceptual and practical guide. It offers valuable insights for a wide range of civil society actors, including policymakers, educators, and technologists, in their efforts to protect information integrity and bolster societal resilience. By laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive understanding of societal resilience to disinformation, the article contributes to the broader discourse on information protection and provides actionable guidance for addressing the evolving challenges posed... Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript. In highly digitized democratic societies, there are growing concerns about the impact of disinformation. European countries have faced significant challenges related to disinformation issues, such as elections, fundamental democratic values, pandemics, and migration, among others.

This has prompted the European Commission (2018a) to outline four pillars in its action plan on tackling online disinformation. These include improving institutional capabilities, fostering coordinated responses, engaging the private sector, and raising awareness. The Digital Services Act (European Union 2022) has binding regulatory powers to address large social media platforms, for instance, if they are deemed to be promoting and disseminating disinformation. However, the effectiveness of these measures remains uncertain. The Global Risks Report 2024 by the World Economic Forum (2024) clearly illustrates this, ranking disinformation as the most severe short-term (2-year) global risk and placing societal polarization in third place – with both... Disinformation, information manipulation and interference are forms of hybrid threats manifesting across the world.

The threat is always present and expanding; a growing number of actors are using an increasing number of tactics. This is a global challenge also affecting the Western Balkans. Dealing with this challenge requires a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society approach, which the EU is supporting across the region. Strengthening partnerships with international and local organizations – governmental and non-governmental – helps build the resilience local populations need to autonomously identify and tackle disinformation, and increases the capacity of the Western Balkans partners... This work remains crucial for strengthening democracy, for example in relation to protecting the integrity of elections, access to information, and media freedom. Increasing media literacy is also of high importance.

Being able to critically assess, use and create information is a key skill in the 21st century, allowing citizens to navigate the information environment and make well-informed choices. It also facilitates their responsible participation in political processes and voting in democratic elections, free from interference and manipulation. In line with the overall EU efforts in this field, the EU supports activities to enhance media literacy in the Western Balkans. This includes research studies throughout the region which raise awareness and build social resilience such as “Disinformation in the Online Sphere: The Case of BiH” and "Disinformation and Information Distortion in North Macedonia", capacity-building...

Teaching Resilience To Disinformation A National And European

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