From Uninformed to Disinformed Citizens? - Comparing Western Information Environments

Welcome to the project website of the Antwerp-Zurich research collaboration

 

Latest Publications and Activities


Find our new article "Identifying the Drivers Behind the Dissemination of Online Misinformation: A Study on Political Attitudes and Individual Characteristics in the Context of Engaging with Misinformation on Social Media" here.


Find our latest article "The sharing of disinformation in cross-national comparison: analyzing patterns of resilience" here.



New publication in the journal Digital Journalism: "Is Sensationalist Disinformation More Effective? Three Facilitating Factors at the National, Individual, and Situational Level". Find it here.




About

The campaigns for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the U.K. vote to leave the European Union ("Brexit") as well as the global COVID-19 health crisis have increased the discussion about the potential influence of online mis- and disinformation. Yet, empirical evidence regarding the rise of online disinformation and its effect on society is inconclusive, and little is known about the situation outside the US. The project "From Uninformed to Disinformed Citizens? - Comparing Western Information Environments" aims to assess the extent of online disinformation (“fake news”) in Western Europe compared to the US and investigates in particular: Which actors spread false information, how is disinformation consumed and perceived, and which societal groups are most susceptible to being affected by it?

Our international team based at the universities of Zurich and Antwerp analyzes the problem in six countries (Switzerland, Belgium, France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S.) from several perspectives. With this website we want to share our findings of the project. Therefore, we constantly update the activities undertaken as well as the articles published in connection with this project on online disinformation.

The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (http://www.snf.ch/en) and the Research Foundation - Flanders (https://www.fwo.be/en/). It further is endorsed by the Digital Society Initiative of the University of Zurich (www.dsi.uzh.ch).