Information disorder in the European Union: building a regulatory response

Abstract

Fighting disinformation is a multilateral battle that deploys a range of tools: technology platforms, domestic policies, the media and verification platforms. As disinformation techniques have grown more sophisticated and the number of disruptive actors has also risen, the European Union (EU) has felt compelled to accelerate a political and regulatory process that began to take shape in 2015, when the European Council for the first time asked the European Commission to take action against what it considered a threat to democratic processes in the EU and its member states. This paper provides a critical analysis of the evolution of the strategies for fighting online disinformation within the EU framework, and of the implications of this willingness to intervene for the large digital platforms operating in Europe.

Keywords

• digitalisation
• eu
• disinformation
• disruption
• technology platforms
• regulation