With disinformation campaigns becoming a hot topic at every recent European election – from Romania to Germany – digital regulation is on everyone’s mind. Studio Europa Maastricht sat down with Mariëlle Wijermars, Assistant Professor in Internet Governance at Maastricht University, to explore why battling online disinformation is one of EU’s top priorities today and why the current US government could be an obstacle.
Mariëlle will share her insights on our panel “Disinformation, data, democracy: can the EU ensure a safer digital future?” on May 15, organized together with Brightlands Smart Services Campus Heerlen. Register here to join the conversation.
From Brexit to European elections
Wijermars’ research explores how authoritarian states seek to influence the online dissemination of information. She notes that many threats targeted by the Digital Services Act (DSA) respond to the type of tactics pioneered by Russia:
“You see reflected in the DSA that Russian efforts to manipulate our online information environment have been the inspiration for some of the threats. Of course, the DSA is very broad, but if you look at the field of disinformation and the legal obligations it specifies, especially for ‘very large online platforms’ (VLOPs), then you can absolutely see it. This is not surprising, given that the European Union’s regulatory intention for these platforms accelerated only after the Russian interference into the 2016 US elections and in Brexit. This was really the moment when disinformation as a regulatory issue started to come onto the agenda and started to be taken seriously. There was a gradual realisation that information manipulation required more attention and more top-down rule-setting than what had been the case before. The EU needed to switch from self-regulatory approaches to regulatory approaches.
This, together with the challenges arising from health-related disinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic, was the turning point in terms of policy awareness. There was an acknowledgment that platforms are actually vulnerable to manipulation, including by threat actors, and that they will not out of their own initiative tackle these issues, or not to the extent that we feel is needed to protect our democracies. Of course, a lot of time has passed since 2016, but if you trace what the EU has done since then, you see that that was initially the key inspirations for that dimension of what now is captured in the DSA.”
Although the DSA took effect over a year ago, Russian disinformation still targets European elections, as seen in Romania and Germany. Wijermars says it’s too early to judge the DSA’s effectiveness against such threats:
“It’s an incredibly tricky problem because when we think about disinformation, the first thing that comes to mind is blatant lies with the intent to mislead, false information. But what we see evidenced in the broader research—and what is reflected in how policymakers now speak about it—is that we should rather think in terms of information manipulation and attempts at interfering in political processes such as elections. This means the information itself doesn’t have to be false. It can be about its timing, or about the amplification of information that otherwise would not have reached a large audience. It can even be about activities that aim to suppress information. If you then look at what this new understanding of disinformation means for formulating rules that should apply to everyone and that now must be enforced by platforms, there is a significant risk of infringing upon rights in the process. When we speak about information that is demonstrably true or false, it’s easier to make distinctions compared to when we are dealing with influential timing.
“In terms of what the DSA can provide to shield European democracies and get platforms to better manage electoral risks, the Romanian elections are the key test case. We will have to see in the months to come how effective the DSA is, whether it needs tailoring, and whether the will to enforce it is strong enough.”
“In terms of what the DSA can provide to shield European democracies and get platforms to better manage electoral risks, the Romanian elections are the key test case.”
In the meantime, disinformation tactics—from troll farms to AI-generated content—evolve rapidly. Wijermars outlines priorities for policymakers:
“First, oversight: we must know what’s happening. It’s positive that many organisations—commercial, academic, and NGOs—monitor and report on these threats. Yet their work is being politicised. In the US, funding for such research is being retracted, reframed as censorship, and strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) aim to silence researchers and journalists. This undermines oversight.”
EU vs US
Another test case that Wijermars identifies concerns transatlantic relations:
“It’s about EU relations with US platforms, where everything has shifted under the new Trump administration, which now backs platform companies and portrays EU regulations—such as requirements to act against disinformation—as censorship. The US administration, along with the US platform companies, aggressively pushes back against EU rules. If the EU imposes fines on large platforms, what happens next? Over the past decade, the idea had taken hold that, in technology governance, the EU could project its ‘normative power’ and set rules that would be influential even beyond Europe, compensating for our dependence on foreign platform companies. Now the balance has shifted, and we are finally talking seriously about reducing these dependencies. The US administration adopts an absolutist—and misleading—position on freedom of expression that is incompatible with European values and the protection of human rights online.”
“The US administration, along with the US platform companies, aggressively pushes back against EU rules. If the EU imposes fines on large platforms, what happens next?”
For the EU, protecting online freedom of expression requires intervention, she stresses:
“If you just let online discourses develop unregulated—given the volume of attempts at interference and platforms’ commercial incentives—freedom of expression will not naturally emerge. To ensure pluralism online, some degree of intervention, of content moderation, is needed. Our model is clear: we commit to human rights, we hold platforms accountable for both their actions and their inaction and expect them to uphold rights online, and to ensure this we need data access for research and oversight. The US position is the opposite. They point to past suspensions of Trump’s social media accounts as violations of free speech, politicising the issue and undermining the very right they claim to protect.”
Not all problems come from outside the European Union
While the EU wrestles with regulating disinformation and protecting free expression online, authoritarian governments often adopt ‘anti-disinformation’ laws to censor, Wijermars underlines:
“Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a wave of such laws worldwide. Authoritarian regimes copy each other. Russia has championed fake-news legislation that effectively silences independent media. Because of this legislation, news aggregators, for example, no longer recommend independent media, only state outlets. This model spreads globally under the guise of fighting fake news. Their actual impact often is the silencing of independent voices.”
She warns that the assumption that disinformation is coming only from foreign actors is misleading:
“If you say that it’s only a problem of foreign interference and it comes from hostile actors outside the EU, you are not taking the problem seriously and therefore you cannot solve it. In the EU context, what worries me most is that for a very long time information manipulation was framed as an outside vs. inside problem: if we can just remove the manipulative content from these outside actors and stop it from spreading, then suddenly all of our problems will disappear, which of course is not true. We have to ask ourselves, why are these information operations successful? Because they amplify existing issues, they tap into societal frictions, into worries about inequality and other societal problems that we have. Removing the content, on its own, doesn’t save our democracies.”
Commerce over content
Adding to the complexity is the EU’s economic focus, the expert explains:
“Competition is the name of the game, but there are limits to what it can do. What always amazes me in the way we approach platforms is that it’s quite content-focused. At the same time, we have this entire advertisement and monetisation infrastructure around it, which intensifies amplification, virality and engagement. There is a need for alternative platforms that would really embed public values and move away from these perverse incentives. Now could be the moment to push for this because the EU is finally waking up to the need for actual autonomy and independence, and for European alternatives for fundamental digital services. We need European alternatives for cloud and social media.”
“We need European alternatives for cloud and social media.”
“This is also the moment to make sure that public values and democratic rights that we stand for are embedded into the way that these systems are built and the way that they work. This might mean that we need to take some steps back from this whole commercial monetisation model that we are so familiar with that we think it’s natural. But if we go back into the history of the internet, there was social media before monetisation,” she adds.
Political influencer marketing is another risk, Wijermars emphasises:
“If political influencers are indeed very influential, as research shows, then it really matters where they get the money from. Sponsorship disclosures help, but as political influencers grow in prominence, it does change the playing field in a way that is relevant for regulators. Our task as researchers is to study these shifts. As soon as we see significant effects—election results shifting or populist gains—the question is when to act in case these changes contribute towards hollowing out democratic institutions. Such democratic erosion processes of course involve more than online platforms—think of corruption, judicial intimidation, and other forms of rule-of-law erosion. Platforms play a role, but for regulatory action relating to these issues timing is critical: act too late, and it’s incredibly hard to backtrack these changes.”
One of the cases when the EU took swift action was the unprecedented EU ban on Russian state media:
“Blocking Russian state media was deemed necessary and proportional, but it’s a major step and sets a precedent. What about Chinese state media? Or US commercial outlets critical of European politicians? In the past, the EU rejected similar bans on Russian state media by the Baltic states. Now, this Europe-wide ban challenges previous norms. Even if we agree, we must acknowledge its significance—it’s a big step,” Wijermars concludes.
Dr Mariëlle Wijermars is Assistant Professor in Internet Governance. She conducts research on internet freedom and the human rights implications of internet policy and platform governance. Much of her work focuses on how authoritarian states, such as Russia, seek to shape and restrict the circulation of information and the role (inter)national platform companies play in implementing internet censorship.
