Description
This paper presents a thematic analysis of findings from three stakeholders each in the UK and the EU – news outlets, civil society and policymakers - about the extent and nature of any perceived threat from disordered information and responses to it. It draws on a conceptual framework arguing that ‘news’ – social and mainstream outlets - can be both a conduit, and target, of disordered information as a means of gaining strategic advantage. Hence, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation can be presented as ‘factual’ news, and journalism can be discursively undermined with disordered information produced through covert surveillance, SLAPP prosecutions, cyberactivity, falsehoods and the exploitation of existing social cleavages such as gender, race and sexuality. It enables states to manage the wider foreign policy discourse to maintain plausible deniability, however implausible this is. It also enables states to infiltrate other news eco-systems using their liberal tools of freedom of expression and the rule of law. Such conduiting and targeting is further enabled by cyber and AI advances. Hence there is a need for understanding how the threat is perceived by stakeholders – and what their response may be.
