The European Parliament’s Special Committee on the Covid-19 Pandemic (COVI) held a hearing, on Monday 30 January, on the impact of disinformation on democracy during the pandemic. The experts warned about ineffective health communication, but above all about the willingness of foreign actors to interfere.
An information war
“In every crisis, you have foreign powers, especially Russia and China, interfering in political debates whose aim is to destabilise our democracies”, recalled Raphaël Glucksmann (S&D, French), Chair of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on foreign interference (ING2). As proof, he defended, disinformation was accompanied by cyber attacks on the European Medicines Agency and hospitals in order to make the EU “dysfunctional”.
However, the uncertainty associated with the pandemic has made it “the perfect ground for destabilisation campaigns”. An analysis shared by Edward Lucas of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Information operations, he also stressed, “are by their nature often visible [...], but they are just part of the whole toolkit of responses and tactics that the Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin are willing to deploy”.
For the expert, it is important to name the problem and “be absolutely clear that we are under attack [and] that we face serious threats”, to monitor it as well as to “take countermeasures”. In particular, he called on MEPs to question the economic pressures of the media market. “If you simply leave it to the market, you allow the wealthy to buy influence [and] subsidise media outlets that protect and promote their points of view”, he summarised.
Ineffectiveness of official communications
Focusing on vaccine hesitancy, Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), suggested that this is linked to a lack of trust in institutions, a politicisation of the health crisis, as well as conflicting messages (e.g. about wearing a mask).
For her, the pandemic has also shown that the official communication methods of public health institutions, “jargon-heavy”, “fall short to resonate with the public”. Instead, she advocates for explanations that take into account patients’ concerns, are context sensitive and are delivered by trusted health professionals, rather than by distant bodies.
Finally, the two experts also stressed the need for education. Not only does the public need to have a better grasp of the scientific process, but experts also need to learn how to communicate better with the media, they argued.
In the second half of the afternoon, MEPs discussed a study that looked at how official communications and disinformation related to Covid-19 have been handled by Member States and the European Commission. This study also makes recommendations on the implementation of the Code of Practice on Disinformation (see EUROPE 12973/10) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) (see EUROPE 13064/18).
To read the study: https://aeur.eu/f/54k (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)