Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding Democracies
Societies’ resilience to disinformation is often linked to democratic backsliding, but the relationships between these concepts remain poorly understood. To measure structural resilience to disinformation, we expand the framework developed for consolidated Western democracies by Humprecht et al. (2...
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| Language: | English |
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Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society
2025-04-01
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| Series: | Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society |
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| Online Access: | https://ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wjds/article/view/223 |
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| author | Antonia Peißker Mike Cowburn Ulrike Klinger |
| author_facet | Antonia Peißker Mike Cowburn Ulrike Klinger |
| author_sort | Antonia Peißker |
| collection | DOAJ |
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Societies’ resilience to disinformation is often linked to democratic backsliding, but the relationships between these concepts remain poorly understood. To measure structural resilience to disinformation, we expand the framework developed for consolidated Western democracies by Humprecht et al. (2020) to democracies that are experiencing varying degrees of democratic backsliding; the Visegrád Group of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Our application leads us to generate additional macro-level features that should be incorporated when thinking about disinformation resilience in states experiencing democratic backsliding. Specifically, we identify how the role of civil society operates differently depending on the level of democracy and that the value of media trust is conditioned by the degree of institutional capture, adding these complementary measures to the original framework. Our updated empirical analyses suggest that, of our cases, Slovakia had the greatest and Hungary had the least resilience to disinformation. The advancement of the framework enables its application beyond consolidated democracies by identifying additional aspects that help build structural resilience to disinformation elsewhere.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-bc13cc0d16224caf9199c40ddd3d2890 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2748-5625 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-04-01 |
| publisher | Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society |
| spelling | doaj-art-bc13cc0d16224caf9199c40ddd3d28902025-08-20T03:19:11ZengWeizenbaum Institute for the Networked SocietyWeizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society2748-56252025-04-015210.34669/wi.wjds/5.2.2Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding DemocraciesAntonia Peißker0Mike Cowburn1Ulrike Klinger2University of Hamburg, GermanyZeppelin Universität, Friedrichshafen, GermanyUniversity of Amsterdam, Netherlands Societies’ resilience to disinformation is often linked to democratic backsliding, but the relationships between these concepts remain poorly understood. To measure structural resilience to disinformation, we expand the framework developed for consolidated Western democracies by Humprecht et al. (2020) to democracies that are experiencing varying degrees of democratic backsliding; the Visegrád Group of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Our application leads us to generate additional macro-level features that should be incorporated when thinking about disinformation resilience in states experiencing democratic backsliding. Specifically, we identify how the role of civil society operates differently depending on the level of democracy and that the value of media trust is conditioned by the degree of institutional capture, adding these complementary measures to the original framework. Our updated empirical analyses suggest that, of our cases, Slovakia had the greatest and Hungary had the least resilience to disinformation. The advancement of the framework enables its application beyond consolidated democracies by identifying additional aspects that help build structural resilience to disinformation elsewhere. https://ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wjds/article/view/223online disinformationdemocratic backslidingEastern EuropeVisegrad Groupcivil societymedia capture |
| spellingShingle | Antonia Peißker Mike Cowburn Ulrike Klinger Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding Democracies Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society online disinformation democratic backsliding Eastern Europe Visegrad Group civil society media capture |
| title | Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding Democracies |
| title_full | Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding Democracies |
| title_fullStr | Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding Democracies |
| title_full_unstemmed | Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding Democracies |
| title_short | Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding Democracies |
| title_sort | disinformation resilience in backsliding democracies |
| topic | online disinformation democratic backsliding Eastern Europe Visegrad Group civil society media capture |
| url | https://ojs.weizenbaum-institut.de/index.php/wjds/article/view/223 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT antoniapeißker disinformationresilienceinbackslidingdemocracies AT mikecowburn disinformationresilienceinbackslidingdemocracies AT ulrikeklinger disinformationresilienceinbackslidingdemocracies |