Behind Closed Curtains: Disinformation on messenger services

Disinformation is not a phenomenon of the digital era. It has always been used to damage political opponents and destabilise societies. However, the popular use of social media and messenger services nowadays have turned the creation and the massive peer-to-peer spread of content in an easy game. The discovery of far-right nationalists on these platforms as well as the growing role of these communication tools for shaping public conspiracy discourse about the Coronavirus pandemic have shed some light on these behind the curtains practices. Furthermore, the COVID-19 related infodemic highlights the urgency for decision-makers, messenger companies, and civil society to address this topic.

This paper includes recommendations designed to provide guidelines for political decisions and to serve as a basis for further discourse. Those have been formulated through research on the use of messenger services for disinformation in Germany, India, and Brazil where such practices have been well recorded and caused significant disorder in the public domain.

While the paper has been published in German and English language originally, the Bulgaria and North Macedonia office of FNF have now made it available for policy experts and the general public in North Macedonia. A country, where a few small cities were involved in world-scale fake news distribution campaigns during Trump's election campaign. The publication is designed to contribute to the further content preparation of our partners in the country, tackling the topics of disinformation and freedom of speech, as well as to bring in a new perspective to the general public discourse. For this purpose, the volume is available in the two official national languages: