Stefan Heumann’s contribution ‘Protecting democracy in the EU: Tackling the disinformation problem’ makes the argument that the core of our liberal democracy – the competition for political power through elections – can only work if facts about the candidates and their political programmes are not distorted or misrepresented. This is why disinformation campaigns – the dissemination of false information with the intention to mislead – are such an essential threat to our liberal democracies. To craft effective policy responses, we need a much more comprehensive approach at the EU level than the current focus on identifying and countering foreign, and particularly Russian, disinformation within the context of the European External Action Service (EEAS). Instead, he proposes to develop and implement a ‘Disinformation Index’ to measure member states’ resilience against disinformation, to hold political parties and campaigns accountable and to create clear rules for social media platforms.
Read the paper here