This is clearly fake — isn’t it?
The ever increasing wealth gap between the rich and the poor, problems of the refugee crisis and the fact that terror is an omnipresent threat to mankind — all these factors are major reasons why so many right-wing politicians are forming governments in Europe, or are on the rise to do so.
The triumph of Trump, the never-ending reign of Putin, the rise of he AFD and PEGIDA in Germany, Norbert Hofer of Austria’s Freedom Party or Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front, it looks as if all our nightmares are about to come true.
Sadly we can not deny, that there is also the chance of Germany being governed by a right-wing party again. In fact, the European Union only recently warned German chancellor Angela Merkel, that Russia is seeking to influence the outcome of many key elections such as in France, the Netherlands and Germany. Ever since the election of Donald Trump, which was seen as highly unlikely, there has been major proof that the Kremlin „hacked“ the US election with the help of Fake News.
How did they do that? Do Fake News really have such an impact on the voter’s opinion as to even chance it? And if, is Germany, among others really going to be next?
Sadly, it is not that easy to explain. Vladimir Putin did not tell his intelligence service to hack into the election-machine of the US, to actively chance the outcome in his interest. I wish he did, this would have made things so much easier!
The US would have found out, called the election injust and they would have had to do it again. However, Putin did not manipulate the election itself, he manipulated the voter’s opinion. He spread FAKE NEWS — my personal non-word 2016 (and probably also 2017). Fake news have so much power because they are funny, unbelievable or horrifying and people tend to love sensationalism. Therefore these news have a habit of quickly being shared throughout the internet. Often a fragment of truth is taken out of context and added with some shocking lies.
With these wrong and often threatening imformation, Putin tried to target the public trust, probably the most valuable unit in an election. Often there were so many conflicting and contradicting messages over the internet, that the audience was almost unable to distinguish between what is fake news and what is real. This is a common strategy in the disinformation campaign against the EU and its politicians.
How does Russia benefit from this secret cyber-war? Concerning Germany, Angela Merkel is certainly a huge pain in the ass for Putin, with her not lifting the sanctions against russia. Additionally, her refugee policy is also a thorn in Putin’s side. In contrast to her, the Alternative für Deutschland (AFD), however, did show sympathy with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government in general. They represent right-wing values opposing Merkel’s refugee policy and above all think that the Islam is incompatible with western values.
Therefore, it is highly likely that Putin is also going to use his new military tool fake news in the German election.
When I read about the US elections being influenced by Russia with the help of fake news, I asked myself if there is really only Russia to blame. People eventually voted freely and democratically – they made their own decision based on what? Only Fake News? I highly doubt that political attitudes, experiences and the political involvement of the voters did not count more than fake news.
I study communication science, and indeed, this was also a question in one of my seminars political communication. Having read so much about Russia’s influence on the election, our lecturer asked us, what we thought was more important. The political attitudes that already existetd, or doubts that arose due to fake news. Research has proved, that people who had already made up their mind, were not remakably influenced by Fake News, and voted due to their politicial belief. However, voters that hadn’t been completely sure whom to vote for, were indeed influenced by the fake news. Being not completely comitted to one of the candidates, these voters were more likely to be influenced in favour of, in this case, Donald Trump.
How can we protect us from becoming targets of fake news or even better, actively try to select only valide information?
Renowed scientists of Camebridge University recently examined the possibility of actively revealing fake news. Therefore test subjects were given information about climate change (no it’s not invented by Gggina, Mr. Trump). If the test subjects first read an article about scientists stating that climate change is nonsense, and after were given a real one about the negative impacts of climate change, they were likely to believe the first one. This, however, was also true vice versa. This leaves us with the insight, that people with a more comprehensive knowledge are more likely to be able to distinguish between fake news and valide news.
I sadly think there is no ultimate way of doing this. Personally, I don’t think that I could be influenced to such an extend that I would actually vote for the AFD for instance. Neither would my friends nor my family. However, this is only the case because I know my social environment and they are likely no right-centered voters. However, there are a lot of people in Germany that may not know how to vote yet, due to the refugee crisis and economic reasons. These people are the likely targets of the Kremlin.
I have no universial answer, however, I think that there has to be a really valide and reliable newssource that people can always rely on such as for example the different party campaigns. The Tagesschau, for instance, is one of these institutions, too. However, the credibility of the „öffentlich rechtliche“ has been undermined by especially the AFD and PEDIGA by calling them „Lügenpresse“.
At the moment, I believe in the santity of German voters and that the election of Trump has been a cautionary tale.
