ISSUE BRIEF: HOW DISINFORMATION IMPACTS POLITICS AND PUBLICS
EXPANDING THE ANALYTICAL FRAME
Disinformation is the use of half-truths and non-rational argument to manipulate public opinion in pursuit of political objectives. It is a growing threat to the public sphere across countries.
While Russian disinformation has attracted substantial attention in the US and Europe, Moscow is not the only or sole source of disinformation.
Political actors worldwide, from state agencies to individuals, exploit the economics of digital advertising and the fast-paced modern information ecosystem for their political advantage.
The issue demands a broader frame: from viewing it as a national security threat posed by a discrete actor to recognizing political‑economic weaknesses in the contemporary information space.
Disinformation serves a wider variety of purposes in more settings than commonly appreciated:
Short term: distract from issues, obscure the truth, or spur a desired action by consumers.
Long term: shape the information environment in which individuals, governments, and other actors form beliefs and make decisions.
Key drivers include: the speed and reach of social media, cognitive biases, low trust in media, and the economics of online advertising.
DISINFORMATION AS A REACTIVE TACTIC
In the short term, disinformation can be used reactively by different actors:
Example: In Eastern Ukraine, after the downing of a commercial airliner, Russian state media proposed multiple, often conflicting explanations for the crash.
Syria: Russian diplomats, media, and intelligence services falsified evidence, pushed misleading narratives, and spread falsehoods about Russia’s airstrikes and about chemical weapons use by the Syrian government.
Crisis response: After Syria protests in 2011, newly created Twitter accounts harassed users; reports indicate the Assad regime paid a PR firm to flood opposition hashtags with photos of nature and sports scores.
A common reactive tactic is to flood the information space to drown out discussion.
Bot-and-troll activity shapes political conversation online:
The CCP’s “fifty-cent party” (apocryphally named for posters’ per-post rate) aimed to astroturf support and derail online conversations that might spark mass mobilization.
Estimates suggest this effort involves about individuals and produces nearly social media posts per year.
Over time, similar approaches became common in authoritarian manipulation and were amplified via automation.
In the mid-2000s, Russia began recruiting human commenters and later adopted automated “bot” accounts; on Twitter, more than half of tweets in Russian are produced by automated accounts (i.e., > frac{1}{2}).
Many campaigns now use partially automated accounts (cyborg/sock puppet) to avoid detection.
Other notable country examples:
Mexico: paid political consultants orchestrated theft of campaign secrets and large-scale disinformation distribution to voters; pro-government accounts swarm hashtags, threaten activists, and marginalize protesters.
Philippines: sophisticated underground public relations industry where digital strategists, influencers, and paid commenters compete to maximize narrative control; freelancers tied to national political parties via subcontracting of digital disinformation.
PROACTIVE DISINFORMATION AND THE “DEMAND SIDE” OF THE CHALLENGE
Proactive disinformation has greater potential than reactive disinformation because events are less constraining; it can move audiences to action, shape or confuse public understanding, and influence political events.
Proactive campaigns still draw on preexisting societal divides and produce content for which there is societal demand; they amplify existing political beliefs more than introducing new beliefs or narratives.
Mechanisms that increase effectiveness:
Low trust in media and cognitive biases that favor content confirming beliefs, prefer partisan cheerleading over fact-checkers, and share content that elicits anger or fear.
Social media’s role as a news source diminishes traditional gatekeepers and increases the influence of a vigilant subset of “motivated reasoners” who interpret information to justify preexisting beliefs or desires.
The velocity of online information spread creates ideal conditions for disinformation campaigns.
DIGITAL DISINFORMATION CAN INSPIRE REAL-WORLD ACTION
Proactive disinformation can translate into real-world events and mobilization.
Germany, 2016—Lisa case: a 13-year-old Russian-German girl; untrue claims spread by Russian state media and the Russian Foreign Minister accused Germany of a cover-up; thousands protested the government’s handling of the case, exploiting domestic anti-migrant sentiment.
Digital disinformation often promotes xenophobia and hate speech.
India: far-right religious figures used messaging apps to spread false claims about religious minorities, sparking communal violence.
Indonesia: leaders decried hate speech and rumors on social media; the discourse played a pivotal role in the Jakarta mayoral election.
Historical parallel: mass media spread disinformation and hate in genocides; social media now plays a similar role in contemporary atrocities (e.g., Burma), where ultranationalist Buddhist monks mobilized supporters against the Rohingya.
DISINFORMATION DURING ELECTIONS
Electoral disinformation aims to influence whether people vote or abstain (or whom they vote for).
Reach, speed, and low cost of social media magnify the problem; actors include subnational political figures and organizations; state organs are sometimes complicit.
South Korea (2012): National Intelligence Service generated more than Twitter messages supporting then-President Park Geun-hye and denigrating her rival.
Kenya (2017): domestically sourced disinformation; rival factions organized sophisticated digital operations with influential social media personalities, paid commentators, and bot armies; digital advertising amplified hate speech and disinformation targeting opponents; hoax websites imitated real news outlets and created disinformation at industrial scale.
Survey data: in Kenya, nine in ten citizens had seen false information about the election online; about of respondents believed the information was deliberately false.
These dynamics occurred during an especially contentious political moment in a country with a history of post-election violence, underscoring the danger of disinformation in elections.
FOREIGN-SOURCED DISINFORMATION IN ELECTORAL CONTEXTS
While disinformation often originates domestically, authoritarian governments increasingly use it to influence elections beyond their borders.
Russia as a paradigm: elections in France, Germany, and the United States in 2016–2017; the Czech presidential election (2018); Catalonian vote on secession (2017). Russia employed a mix of state-owned international outlets, Moscow-linked smaller sites, automated accounts, and sometimes leaks of stolen documents; estimating total effects is difficult because operations often imitate domestic material.
Disinformation can also flow from foreign sources into mainstream domestic outlets.
China (Beijing) has a somewhat different international media strategy but has experimented with disinformation in Taiwanese politics as part of a broader policy toward unification with the People’s Republic of China.
DISINFORMATION AS A STRATEGIC APPROACH
Not all campaigns are tied to a specific event; some campaigns seek to alter the broader information space, promote longer-running narratives, or degrade civic discourse by fostering division or cynicism.
Historical pattern: political actors have used disinformation for millennia; what’s new is the velocity and volume enabled by digital technologies, which makes publics angrier, fearful, or disoriented.
A framing used by Russian disinformation is that there is no objective truth; this allows multiple narratives and conspiracy theories to undermine trust in Western institutions.
Examples of explicit messages used to undermine trust include claims that European politicians support Nazism in Ukraine, that German authorities will fund refugee “harems,” or that NATO planes spray mind-control chemicals over Poland.
Beyond explicit claims, these narratives implicitly suggest Western media conceal the truth, triggering doubt and disengagement without requiring immediate action.
A case in point: the “migrant harems” narrative exploited anti-migrant sentiment to deepen political divides and destabilize the European Union for geopolitical gain.
The phenomenon is not limited to state actors; subnational actors, business interests, and other non-state actors also engage in disinformation practices.
South Africa example: wealthy industrialists with ties to politicians enlisted a British PR firm to distract from corruption by inflaming racial tensions; by combining media outlets owned by those interests with an aggressive social media campaign, the effort diverted attention from state capture and the racial-economic fault lines.
The overarching message is that the challenge is global and structural: it reflects vulnerabilities in human cognition and the evolving information environment created by new technologies.
The call to action is to recognize the global and structural nature of the problem in order to design effective responses.
CONCLUDING INSIGHTS
The disinformation challenge spans multiple actors (state, non-state, domestic, foreign), geographies, and time horizons (short-term crises to long-term strategic shaping).
It exploits cognitive biases, erodes trust in traditional information sources, and leverages the speed of digital communication to magnify impact.
Solutions require recognizing the scale and structural character of the problem, rather than treating it as a purely national security issue or solely a communications problem.
Acknowledgment: this synthesis draws on the author’s research; Christina Apelseth contributed research assistance.[END OF TRANSCRIPT]