Policies to tackle disinformation in EU member states

Abstract

With the growth of internet penetration, it has become increasingly hard for audiences to determine what information they can trust. They are often exposed to fabricated content that is disseminated with the intent of misleading them. In turn, disinformation causes disruptions in society, especially in the context of elections. This report looks at some of the policy examples that aim to tackle this problem. It starts with an overview of the assessments of the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) for the specific variables that are devoted to the topic. We briefly describe the EU approach to disinformation, and, as a next step, we zoom in on seven EU member states, some of which held elections in the past years or introduced regulations related to disinformation that are worth looking into. The spread of disinformation is typically regulated by non-legislative methods, though a handful of countries have tried to use a legal approach to deal with the phenomenon. Some of the measures are still controversial, mainly because they might affect the freedom of expression. Moreover, there is a question as to whether they are complementary to a well-functioning European approach to combating disinformation.