Why Fact-Checking Will Not Bring Disinformation to an End

Miriam Lexmann, Director, EU Office, International Republican Institute

Gaps in democratic governance, combined with lasting societal vulnerabilities and social challenges and injustice render European societies particularly susceptible to subversion. Moreover, in an age of live news feeds and oversaturated media markets, citizens are bombarded with information that is often unverified, decontextualised, and touches upon people’s emotions caused by various social fissures.

In this regard, the key to addressing the phenomena of disinformation (as well as other forms of subversion) lies in improving our understanding of and ability to address wider vulnerabilities, and to focus not only on the rational but primarily on the emotional.

This requires a holistic approach that shifts away from the perception of disinformation as merely requiring technical solutions, such as fact-checking, and towards a deeper political debate on both the Member-States and European-level, that takes into account the nature and adherence to our values and the desire of EU citizens to keep more decision-making powers in the EU capitals. This would require examining and addressing vulnerabilities in relation to i) the strength and flexibility of our institutions, ii) the social, and political processes and the changing nature of political discourse, and iii) the social conditions and disparities faced by our societies.

As an example of this: research conducted by the International Republican Institute has found that the average citizen of the Visegrad countries is increasingly distrustful, frustrated, confused, and focused on making ends meet personally or for their children. Concurrently, they hold a number of concerns, some genuine, others more apparent than real, including:

• Frustration with the direction of the European Union and the feeling that the EU is pushing people to abandon their traditional values;
• Despite limited knowledge of Russia (to a certain extent, including of human rights abuses), there is belief that Russia is a defender of traditional values (such as family, religion, state sovereignty) that the EU has rescinded on;
• Social-economic vulnerabilities (poverty, social inequality, or and corruption) and the gaps in democratic governance continue to dominate people’s concerns and undermine their trust in democratic institutions and liberal democracy per se;
• The lack of impartiality among mainstream media pushes people towards fringe media outlets, often promoting pro-Russian narratives. They generally know that RT is a mouthpiece to serve someone’s interests, but they feel the same way about most of the national or international mainstream media.

Our research continues to highlight that factual disinformation is only part of the problem and so fact-checking does not bring disinformation to end. Disinformative outlets are moving from factual disinformation to emotional disinformation which is harder to recognise and vindicated from law. It is also often echoed by mainstream media as the use of hyperbole increases traffic and generates shares and likes and thus earns money.

These phenomena underline the need for more robust and comprehensive research looking into correlations between social fissures and vulnerabilities to various disinformative narratives and the role that emotions play in this. As they often exploit existing (and all too often genuine) vulnerabilities and concerns, this will require:

• A deeper political debate about the state of European and national governance, including the limits to the competencies of EU institutions and strict adherence to the subsidiarity principle;
• Greater connection between European and national leadership and citizens;
• Rebuilding citizens’ trust and paying greater attention to citizens’ most pressing concerns, such as corruption, poverty and migration. But also to the increasing tensions between Western and Eastern and Northern and Southern parts of the EU;
• Respect for and safeguarding of ideological diversity in the media space by European leaders and
  institutions, to address the above-mentioned lack of impartiality of media;
• Funding opportunities for academia and civil society (from the European Commission) to conduct more thorough research and analysis aimed at understanding the various vulnerabilities and tailoring measures with a greater precision.