Awareness

Internal code: 1.2

Target groups: general public

General description
 * European Parliament, 2021 : We also need to make sure that the insights are spread to a wider audience. Both targeted trainings for people with functions sensitive to foreign interference and general awareness-raising campaigns are important. In this context, media and digital literacy education is crucial to empower citizens to better interpret and evaluate the information they encounter.

Interventions
 * Prebuttal - American claims Russia preparing false flag operation in Ukraine.
 * - (John, T. (2022)) "It is one thing to try to deter potential disinformation campaigns, which are designed to give plausible deniability to leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin. But it becomes another when a liberal democracy relies on unpublished intelligence to convince an already skeptical public of a looming threat."
 * - (Jankowicz, N. on Twitter) "I think there have been quite a few pieces on this "deterrence through declassification." Something that worked reactively during Skripal poisoning. US/UK are leading on making it a proactive strategy now."


 * (NATO 2021) "... most member states and partner countries have deployed and supported communication efforts to counter the impact of disinformation and propaganda. For instance, the Dutch government implemented an online awareness campaign aiming to inform people about the spread of disinformation online ahead of the 2019 local and European elections (Robinson et al., 2019). The Latvian authorities launched a communication campaign against the dissemination of disinformation called “Media are not comedy” targeting primarily youth and senior audiences (Media and learning, 2019). Ukraine created in April 2021 a Center for Countering Disinformation tasked with monitoring and protecting the Ukrainian information space by reaching out to the public about the destabilizing effects of disinformation and propaganda (President of Ukraine, 2021). Some other member states have also supported the efforts of their international public service media (such as Deutsche Welle, BBC World Service, France Médias Monde, CBC Radio-Canada, USAGM, etc.) to expose disinformation and counter it with verified * * (NATO 2021) "Citizens are both the primary catalyst in the dissemination of disinformation and propaganda and the first line of defense against these threats. For that reason, both raising awareness about hostile information activities and helping individuals to identify and reject false or misleading content are critical. To that end, some civil society groups have been supporting and complementing the abovementioned institutional digital and media literacy campaigns. For instance, in the implementation of its “Strategy for a strong democracy” which it adopted in 2018, the Swedish government has been relying heavily on civil society organizations. They carry out digital and media literacy campaigns with the aim of reinforcing societal resilience to disinformation, propaganda, and hate speech online while safeguarding freedom of speech (Swedish Government, 2018)."
 * NCRI publishes monitoring reports: "These are an independent, data-driven, evidence-based series of reports that the NCRI and select partners release regarding the spread of hostile ideological content. One of the main goals of these reports is to handle sensitive social issues around the spread of ideology in an objective and data driven way. We aim to facilitate honest conversations about the spread of political deception, hate and manipulation, especially on social media."

Awareness Impact measurements

Assumptions

Recommendations - (NATO 2021, p.19 ) "Member countries should also further communicate to their national publics the importance of the Alliance’s common values and the need to uphold and defend them. In today’s complex information environment, endogenous and exogenous threats are difficult to disentangle and efforts to protect our democracies must therefore start in the domestic space. Strengthening internal societal cohesion around democratic values and institutions is particularly essential to rebuff the claims of authoritarian actors extolling the supposed superiority of their regimes."

- European Commission (2018a). Action Plan against Disinformation Action 7: With a view especially to the 2019 European elections, but also to the longer term, the Commission and the High Representative, in cooperation with the Member States, will organise targeted campaigns for the public and trainings for media and public opinion shapers in the Union and its neighbourhood to raise awareness of the negative effects of disinformation. Efforts to support the work of independent media and quality journalism as well as the research into disinformation will be continued in order to provide a comprehensive response to this phenomenon.

Awareness Projects

Literature/ research