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10/21/2024 | Pressemitteilung

Trusting facts again: Research project on disinformation

"Disinformation expected in the Bundestag election" "Russia manipulates reporting with AI bot farms". Headlines like these make it clear: Time and again, it is revealed that not all supposed facts can be trusted. But what measures can be taken to combat disinformation? This is what an interdisciplinary research team is investigating in the DYNAMO project, which is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with 1.6 million euros until 2025. In addition to the Universities of Duisburg-Essen and Kassel, the Stuttgart Media University and the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT are also involved. The research team is now presenting its initial findings in a public policy paper.

Effective strategies against the spread of disinformation are urgently needed. "It's not enough just to hold public social networks accountable," explains Prof. Nicole Krämer from the Department of Social Psychology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. "Disinformation actors and their followers have long been gathering in messenger services such as Telegram or WhatsApp: thanks to their public and private communication functions, they offer ideal conditions for spreading disinformation in order to spread half-truths, conspiracy theories or political propaganda," says the expert in internet-based communication.

The DYNAMO (Dynamics of Disinformation Recognition and Combating) research team is now presenting a policy paper in an online press conference on October 23 at 10 a.m., which bundles initial research results and offers concrete recommendations for action for politics, media and science. The expertise for this comes not only from the two universities, but also from the Crossmedia Editing course at the Hochschule der Medien and from Fraunhofer SIT, which is a leader in cyber security and privacy protection and is coordinating the project.

The new paper focuses on the analysis and evaluation of an approach to preventing the spread of disinformation in messenger services, known as prebunking, which the researchers advocate. Prebunking can be achieved through specific education about individual disinformation content or through the general teaching of media skills and common manipulation techniques.

Conspiracy theories via Telegram and WhatsApp

There are reasons why the research team is focusing on messenger services: They lend themselves to the dissemination of so-called "fake news", even if most channels are not designed for this purpose. Nevertheless, channel operators manage to mix their own and forwarded content and also use disinformation. These posts are then shared and spread further and further until they become "the central element of complex alternative constructions of reality", according to Krämer, and are taken for the truth.

Attempts are being made to combat this at European level, but with moderate success. The researchers believe that existing laws, such as the EU's Digital Services Act, are not sufficient to hold the providers of messenger services accountable. This is because functions that enable the sharing of disinformation continue to exist, for example on Telegram or WhatsApp.

The legal analysis was carried out by legal scholars at the University of Kassel. "In our policy paper, we point out gaps in the legal framework and make concrete proposals to tackle these problems," says Prof. Dr. Gerrit Hornung LL.M. from the Department of Public Law at the University of Kassel. This is also important for Germany, emphasizes the expert on legal issues relating to modern information technologies. Federal elections will be held in September 2025. We therefore need to talk about structural problems in recognizing and combating disinformation at an early stage. Otherwise, trust in democratic institutions and processes risks eroding further," explains Hornung.

The online panel discussion will take place from 10 a.m. via Zoom. Registration link: https://uni-due.zoom-x.de/j/62862362457?pwd=2L7s07G6ukmJ94Ta4MMrJi9VTsOlVK.1

Further information:

Policy paper: https://doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/82406

https://www.forschung-it-sicherheit-kommunikationssysteme.de/projekte/dynamo

Contact

Tahireh Panahi
Public Law, IT Law and Environmental Law Unit
Tel. 0561/804-2793
E-mail: t.panahi[at]uni-kassel[dot]de