Crowddoing and crowdfunding democracy: Innovative strategies for countering foreign disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe

Introduction

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has become a ripe target for disinformation campaigns, information warfare, and malign narratives propagated by foreign actors over the past decade. A deluge of fake news and propaganda deployed by hostile states, like Russia and China, is aimed at polarizing societies, paralyzing governments, and nudging the policies of target states towards their preferred positions. As part of hybrid warfare – understood as the use of conventional and unconventional instruments of war to achieve strategic objectives - the tactics are frequently combined and synchronized with tools such as cyberattacks, trade measures, and military interventions to holistically exploit the systemic vulnerabilities in democratic states and undermine the decision-making capabilities of governments (Klečková, 2022).

Russia, for instance, has regularly disseminated narratives that portray the West as a source of moral and economic decay and depicts itself as a defender of traditional values and a place that shares more cultural, historical, and social affinity with the CEE region (Rebegea, 2019). The storylines also seek to sow doubt and confusion about current events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and government responses to these developments. NATO is another frequent target. Moscow, by propagating these narratives, has endeavoured to bring populations closer into its orbit and detract them from a western geopolitical course. The stakes are enormous: the Slovak police, notably, identifies disinformation as a significant human and national security threat, with the potential to severely undermine public institutions and public health (Denník N, 2022a). Disinformation narratives about the pandemic, for example, have adversely impacted public health in the CEE region, with significant buy-in to conspiracy theories about the source of the virus, its risks, and vaccines (GLOBSEC, 2021; Hajdu and Klingová, 2022).

Against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some societies are also deeply divided on their views towards NATO, the culprits of the conflict, and Ukrainian refugees. Underscoring the vulnerabilities of CEE citizens to disinformation, considerable shares of the populations of CEE countries still express support for adopting a more neutral geopolitical position between East and West (ranging from 30 to 50% throughout the region) (GLOBSEC, 2022). And 65% of Slovaks say that potential NATO bases in Slovakia would represent a step towards occupation of the country (GLOBSEC, 2020). Furthermore, though there is robust backing in most CEE countries behind the EU’s sanctions against Russia, majorities are lacking in Hungary and Bulgaria and dissenting voices are strong in Slovakia and Czechia too (GLOBSEC, 2022). Around one-fifth of Slovaks, in fact, favour a Russian victory in the conflict and one-quarter say they don’t care according to another survey (Kerekes, 2022). And an opinion poll conducted in the Visegrad Four countries found that, though a majority of Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians espoused positive views towards Ukrainian refugees, 52% of Slovaks expressed misgivings (Mishchuk and Vlasenko, 2023).

At the same time, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and disputes between CEE countries and China about relations with Taiwan have witnessed pro-NATO and pro-EU sentiment soar throughout the region (Bergsen and Šniukaitė, 2022; Bokša, 2019). Even before Russia’s invasion, these figures were on the rise, coinciding with more public awareness about Russian disinformation and robust efforts to combat it (such as the emergence of numerous civil society initiatives, press fact-checking services, and the creation of the EU’s East StratCom Task Force and EUvsDisinfo platform tasked with researching and fighting malign influence) (Bokša, 2019). The reach of Russian-sponsored news outlets, like RT and Sputnik, has also remained limited over the years – and their presence in the EU is now banned outright. That said, the figures above indicate that even an invasion of a nearby country was not enough to sway certain segments of the population in several countries. High levels of distrust in the media, disgruntlement with public institutions, and proneness to believing disinformation and conspiracy theories also continue to provide hostile actors numerous openings to stoke friction and tensions throughout the CEE region (GLOBSEC, 2022). But the pro-EU and pro-democracy elements of CEE civil societies, for their part, also now enjoy a rare opportunity to root out disinformation.

This article, against this backdrop, aims to explore a few promising initiatives across the region that could be potentially emulated throughout CEE countries to counter disinformation and inoculate populations against its use. To provide theoretical and contextual grounding, the article first turns to briefly underscoring findings from the existing literature on combatting disinformation, defining the term and then heeding the limitations and pitfalls of conventional debunking strategies and the promise of pre-bunking (if designed to focus on training people about the techniques of disinformation actors). The article next spotlights core attributes of the CEE’s media landscape that have enabled foreign malign campaigns to seep into the region in the first place, with an emphasis on declining citizen trust in the media and numerous public institutions, state capture of the media, and the high propensity of some societies towards believing conspiracy theories and misinformation.

The paper subsequently turns to building and expanding upon the existing literature on countering disinformation through several CEE snapshots (with specific projects selected based on their scale, sponsorship diversity, and focal points) that both heed and add to this body of scholarship. This article places various CEE initiatives into two categories of countermeasures – (1) crowddoing activities that leverage broad societal and public involvement in (informal) measures to combat disinformation (rather than relying solely on the media or prominent organizations) and (2) crowdfunding campaigns that draw on small donor contributions to finance various efforts, such as media literacy, targeted towards countering such disinformation. Both complement conventional countermeasures to disinformation including debunking and pre-bunking activities by seeking to address obstacles pertaining to, for instance, media distrust and the rapid spread of disinformation in digital spaces (and the growing consumption of online news therein).

The article, notably, examines different programmes launched by private, government, and/or civil society entities aimed at directly combatting disinformation (i.e. innovative debunking and counter-disinformation campaigns), fostering societal resilience to disinformation and info ops (i.e. education and awareness raising efforts leveraging public contributions), and/or building media pluralism to ensure that disinformation struggles to permeate through society (i.e. establishing independent media outlets again based on the support of the public). While certain segments of CEE populations may be vulnerable to disinformation, this article underscores the fact that the region also boasts civically engaged publics that want to take an active part in fostering societal resilience and fighting back against disinformation.

The rise of digital elves (volunteer information warriors taking the fight to online trolls), the outsourcing of counter-disinformation activities to typically popular public institutions (like the police and military), and the use of crowdfunding to back disinformation education and independent media outlets all present particularly compelling alternative strategies towards responding to foreign influence efforts that can overcome obstacles faced by conventional approaches and address CEE-specific issues related to media distrust and state capture of the media. While comprehensively assessing the effectiveness of these strategies is beyond the scope of this article, the conceptualization of such approaches can serve as part of future analytical and practice-oriented agendas aimed at rethinking pathways for fostering societal resilience both in the CEE region and more broadly.

Countering disinformation: Assessing existing approaches

This paper centrally focuses on conceptualizing and teasing out countermeasures that can be deployed to combat disinformation. Disinformation here is understood as “false, incomplete, or misleading information that is passed, fed, or confirmed to a targeted individual, group, or country” (Schultz and Godson, 1984: p. 41). As opposed to misinformation which may merely involve spreading erroneous content without ill intentions, disinformation involves deliberate attempts to promulgate false or misleading information targeted towards deceiving, manipulating, or influencing public opinion, beliefs, or behaviour. Disinformation, in this regard, comprises several component parts, one focused on its method (the spread of fabricated information), a second on its target (particular individuals or groups), and a third on its goals (moulding attitudes and actions). A fourth component, finally, concerns the various channels that serve as vehicles through which false information is spread – these may include media outlets, social media platforms, websites, and/or interpersonal communication. Disinformation, all told, can be part of systematic campaigns focused on either influencing views on specifically tailored issues (e.g. the origins of the pandemic or the causes of the war in Ukraine) or more generally undermining trust in reliable sources of information, fomenting polarisation, and manipulating public opinion.

Conventional countermeasures to disinformation, meanwhile, have routinely encountered a major obstacle, namely that it is excruciatingly difficult to dislodge falsehoods once they become ingrained memories (Lewandowsky and Van der Linden, 2021). Known as the “continued influence effect”, the phenomenon applies to both the confined laboratory environment under ideal conditions and in the routine setting of everyday life, leading to the persistence of misinformation even against all facts to the contrary (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). This effect has, in particular, hindered the efforts of fact checking initiatives to stem the flow of misinformation. Even when people demonstrate a willingness to update their factual beliefs in response to a fact checking intervention, they have proven unwilling to change their underlying attitudes (e.g. opinion towards political candidates or parties).

Debunking campaigns, nevertheless, are more likely to succeed if they provide an alternative credible explanation to an issue, draw on trusted messengers that communicate culturally aligned messages, and/or identify the source of the misinformation as dubious (Lewandowsky, 2021; Lewandowsky et al., 2012). Yet while this approach has found success in the laboratory on rather innocuous topics, political issues are a different matter. The continued influence effect, combined with strong partisan alignment and political polarization, can lead people to doubt mainstream media sources sometimes labelled as “fake news” by populists (Swire-Thompson et al., 2020; Van der Linden et al., 2020). The term “fact check” itself, furthermore, has become increasingly politicized, especially in right-wing and/or populist circles. Debunking strategies, finally, struggle to overcome their sequencing disadvantage; they are rather always playing a game of “catch-up”. While disinformation tends to quickly spread far and wide, it takes considerable time and resources for fact checks to reach even a small audience (Lewandowsky and Van der Linden, 2021).

Lewandowsky (2021), though, suggests that prebunking – or a “vaccine for brainwash” - presents a more promising alternative to debunking. The approach generally works through two central elements: (1) warnings are introduced to potential recipients about potential misinformation before they are exposed to it and (2) guidance is provided to recipients in advance on what to do when they encounter the misinformation.

Studies have routinely found that pre-bunking confers modest immunity to persuasion. Two recent experiments on climate change misinformation, for example, concluded that forewarning recipients about the tactics of climate change deniers and/or providing them correct information about the scientific consensus on the issue substantially reduced false beliefs compared to those without this pre-bunking training (Cook et al., 2017; Van der Linden et al., 2017). And a study on vaccination attitudes revealed that people warned in advance about anti-conspiratorial information were not adversely impacted by the disinformation once exposed to it. The use of debunking (i.e. spotlighting the conspiratorial material only afterwards), for its part, exerted a smaller effect than pre-bunking – prevention, in other words, was better than a cure (Jolley and Douglas, 2017). The pre-bunking approach has also been used to effectively counter Russian astroturfing aimed at polarizing societies on vaccines and moulding public attitudes towards Russia, with astroturfing defined as attempts to flood the media with content to convey an artificial impression that strong grassroots backing for a cause exists when it otherwise does not (Zerback et al., 2021).

More recently, researchers have also experimented with a third element to pre-bunking focused on educating people about the techniques of disinformation more generally, such as the use of emotional language, appeals to fake experts, scapegoating, fearmongering, logical fallacies, the impersonation of experts online, and group polarization (Lewandowsky and Van der Linden, 2021). The findings appear promising. In a study that forewarned people about the general tendency for disinformation actors to use fake experts to feign consensus on a range of issues, for instance, recipients were less likely to buy into the falsehoods after subsequent exposure compared to the control group (Cook et al., 2017). Similar studies have found that recipients receiving pre-bunking training on the rhetorical tactics used by radical extremist groups are more likely to eschew such propaganda (Braddock, 2022). The implications are stark: if a “broad-spectrum” vaccine can be deployed to inoculate people from disinformation on an array of topics (rather than narrow issue-specific training), then such education can be more seamlessly introduced to the population at better efficiency, cost, and scale.

A final added value to the broad-spectrum approach to pre-bunking pertains to its ability to exert an impact across political cleavages. Disinformation generally is more likely to sway conservatives than liberals (Lewandowsky and Van der Linden, 2021). Meanwhile, debunking strategies, like fact checking, have become increasingly politicized. Yet in an experiment that warned people in advance that disinformation actors tend to spotlight “fake experts” to feign scientific consensus, participants not only were less likely to fall victim to the content but no discernible difference in the effect was apparent based on the ideology of participants (Cook et al., 2017).

The rise of digital and social media platforms and changing news consumption habits therein, however, has underlined the need to continue to tweak and re-orient such strategies and pursue novel countermeasure approaches to ensure broad reach and effectiveness. Majorities in numerous countries, including some in Central and Eastern Europe, indeed now report getting their news from online sources (Domenico et al., 2021; Kazaz and Szicherle, 2022). A 2022 survey across the Visegrad countries found that around a quarter of V4 citizens receive their news from social media platforms, with majorities in Poland and the Czech Republic saying they primarily consume online news more broadly (Kazaz and Szicherle, 2022). These shifting patterns in the production and exchange of information have undergirded an increase in the speed, ease, and volume of the spread of disinformation, which now often garners greater exposure than content from mainstream sources (Soetekouw and Angelopoulos, 2022). Disinformation actors (and their bots) particularly have become savvy at exploiting social media algorithms to micro-target fake news messages to different respective audiences and their filter bubbles (Borgesius et al., 2018; Soetekouw and Angelopoulos, 2022). The changing media landscape will only pose further predicaments in the years to come, with deepfake video technology and generative AI more generally already further complicating the picture. By way of example, deepfake videos – videos generated by AI that falsely give the impression that someone said something they never did - ingrain “false memories” in subjects and challenge viewers to distinguish real from fake (Liv and Greenbaum, 2020).

Any efforts to counter disinformation, therefore, must grapple with an accelerated and magnified “continued influence effect” where falsehoods spread faster and farther. They also need to contend with the numerous channels and methods through which disinformation may be disseminated. The contemporary disinformation studies literature, to this end, has become increasingly attuned to examining different strategies aimed at addressing disinformation in digital spaces. Against the backdrop of fake news about COVID-19 vaccines in Nigeria, for instance, one study scrutinized the effects of social media-based counselling to countering such falsehoods, finding that the treatment group exposed to a counselling intervention reported more positive vaccine perceptions than the control group (Talabi et al., 2022). And an online experiment found that exposing social media users to training guides, analogous to the pre-bunking method, can enhance their ability to detect fake news (Soetekouw and Angelopoulos, 2022). Others have focused their attention on the responsibility and accountability of social media companies to address the issue from a supply-based perspective by diversifying the content that algorithms curate and/or communicating warnings about false information on their networks (Helberger et al., 2018).

As far as Central and Eastern Europe is concerned, this existing literature both speaks to and can heed lessons from the region. If debunking, for example, is ineffective due to distrust of mainstream media outlets and political polarization, then it is important to gain a grasp on how salient those issues are in the CEE region and best tailor strategies towards overcoming the obstacles. Similarly, as societies turn to online sources and social media networks for their news, approaches that can leverage swifter and broader engagement to counter false information and scale up pre-bunking may be called for. At the same time, some of the strategies pursued in the CEE region, including the enlistment of civil society in debunking efforts, pre-bunking education in schools and on digital platforms, and attempts to build media pluralism, can all be assessed and potentially applied elsewhere. To this end, the next section turns towards examining the overall information environment that has enabled disinformation to flourish across the region before the paper turns to engaging with some of specific techniques implemented to combat it.

Disinformation across the CEE region

Foreign malign disinformation, often targeted towards destabilizing the CEE region and the West more broadly, is rampant. According to the US State Department, Russia spent over $300 million on covert information operations between 2014 and 2022 (BBC News, 2022). And the Kremlin invests hundreds of millions more into state-owned media outlets, like Sputnik and Russia Today, that have operated foreign bureaus. Russia’s so-called ‘troll army’ constitutes another important pillar to its disinformation operations. Trolls, notably, are “creatures of chaos” who deliberately disrupt, harass, and attack users on social media networks and news websites through unwanted online content (Klečková, 2022). They also seek to dissuade and dismay targets through the full range of disinformation techniques. Though some people (within and outside Russia) may elect to engage in these activities on their own, Moscow is also known to hire professional trolls who are reportedly closely linked to Russia’s intelligence services and paid monthly wages (Klečková, 2022). Regular allegations have also been levelled at Moscow for funnelling money to extremist candidates and parties that back Russia’s worldviews. This includes, for instance, Bulgarian politicians, journalists, and other opinion-leaders that allegedly agreed to disseminate Kremlin propaganda in exchange for cash payments (Szicherle, 2023). Prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow could count on a bench of 50-150 far-left and far-right MEPS that regularly took its side in votes and often amplified its messages on the European parliamentary floor (Szicherle, 2023).

The Kremlin, leveraging this eclectic mix of propagandists and information warriors, faces no shortage of messages it can deploy to garner public support as part of its disinformation campaigns across the CEE region. And Russia is indeed unrelenting in its efforts. One of its most recent disinformation campaigns, harkening back to similar Soviet era propaganda narratives, falsely claims the US is engineering biological weapons in Ukraine (Stradner and Ruggiero, 2023). The Kremlin has also invested considerably over the past year into malign narratives that blame Ukrainian refugees for stealing local jobs, committing crimes, and/or abusing social benefits (Media, 2022). And though not new, Moscow (with an assist from Minsk) continues to regularly disparage Central and Eastern European governments that advocate pro-EU and pro-NATO stances (Klečková, 2022; Newman, 2021). The propaganda has all been peddled by official Russian social media accounts, alternative portals with links to Russian-sponsored media outlets, and professional online trolls that spew a deluge of fake news online every day.

As far as the CEE region is concerned, the narratives Moscow promulgates are aided by partially receptive domestic audiences and an information landscape that facilitates their permeation. Throughout the region, Moscow appeals to relatively conservative electorates that may disdain migration and/or progressive values, such as LGBTQI+ rights, associated with the EU (Bokša, 2019). The Kremlin, where feasible, has also sought to exploit cultural links through either minority Russian ethnic and Russian language communities and/or slices of populations that may be drawn to the idea of a “panslavic” identity or religious orthodoxy (Bokša, 2019). Buy-in to conspiracy theories, moreover, remains prevalent across the CEE region, with around 30%–50% of people in most countries believing ideas like the claim that “secret elites rule the world” or that the COVID-19 pandemic was faked to enable governments to manipulate populations (GLOBSEC, 2022, 2021). And many are indifferent to democratic governance and/or open to an autocracy based on a “strong leader” model (GLOBSEC, 2022). Moscow, therefore, can appeal to these groups that are already predisposed towards believing disinformation. These efforts, in turn, can further cement and solidify Russia’s favourability and backing from certain segments of society. Beijing, for its part, has sought to leverage a lack of societal awareness about President Xi Jinping and China across the CEE region to define its image in a manner that favours closer economic and political relations based on a crafted perception that it can offer economic advantages to states that cooperate with it (Szicherle, 2023). It deploys a vast global propaganda and media network to get its message across too (Lim and Bergin, 2018).

This socio-political backdrop is paired with a deficient media climate in the CEE region that information warfare can exploit to ensure disinformation campaigns seep through and reach their target audiences. A steady slump in citizen trust in the mainstream media, notably, has rendered the CEE region especially prone to disinformation activities. Across nine CEE countries surveyed in one 2022 study, majorities in only three expressed trust in mainstream outlets (GLOBSEC, 2022). The distrust levels stood highest in Hungary (55%), Poland (56%), Romania (59%), Slovakia (61%), and Bulgaria (64%). People across the region are prone to believing that the major media platforms hold a “worldview which prevents them from reporting the full picture” (Bokša, 2019). In Western Europe, meanwhile, trust in mainstream media outlets remains robust (Bokša, 2019; Matsa, 2018; Newman et al., 2022).

Amid this trust deficit, CEE societies have increasingly turned to social media and digital news platforms to consume content. These online platforms are more likely to host disinformation and other types of harmful content. The problem is exacerbated in the CEE region due to the frequent absence of platform content moderation. A study of the European Commission’s Fighting COVID-19 Disinformation Monitoring Programme across the August 2020 to March 2021 period, for instance, found “clear inequalities in the amount and mix of platform policy actions between EU member states” self-reported by major digital media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Google (Meyer et al., 2021). While large EU countries, like Germany, France, and Spain, benefitted from granular reporting and more fastidious policy actions, small and Eastern European member states were largely ignored by the platforms. Those findings dovetail with disclosures indicating that Facebook faces language blind spots throughout the world in combatting disinformation and hate speech through content moderation (Iyengar, 2021). Following X’s (formerly Twitter) recent staff cuts to its content moderation team, meanwhile, there are legitimate concerns that these problems will be exacerbated on that platform too (Shih et al., 2023).

Russia is particularly notorious for deploying its troll army to bombard the comment sections of websites and social media with narratives it espouses (Szicherle, 2023). These campaigns are targeted towards feigning popular support for pro-Russia opinions and fostering the impression that the propaganda narratives are legitimate stances. During the pandemic, for example, Moscow’s propaganda machinery spotlighted the Sputnik V vaccine throughout the CEE region and used its official Sputnik vaccine account on social media to undermine trust in the vaccines that had been developed by Western companies (Hajdu and Klingová, 2022). These narratives are sometimes amplified by clickbait algorithms and picked up by tabloids, alternative portals, or other problematic outlets in the region. The Kremlin, additionally, relies on elite and population-centric voices that are sympathetic to its cause to further spread the content to a wider audience (Bokša, 2019). These accounts, altogether, constitute an enormous web of actors that disseminate content across different societal population clusters and extend the reach of the narratives.

In addition to dwindling readership and/or loss of independent media organizations, state capture of the press remains another concern (Bokša, 2019). This is particularly true in Hungary – the country declined from 25^th to 85^th in the Press Freedom Index (produced by Reporters Without Borders) between 2009 and 2022 under successive Fidesz governments led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (RSF, 2023). This erosion has been propagated through the “coordinated exploitation of legal, regulatory and economic power to gain control over public media, concentrate private media in the hands of allies, and distort the market to the detriment of independent journalism” (IPI, 2022). The government, for instance, has earmarked considerable public funds into advertising campaigns that prop up Fidesz-aligned publications that disseminate pro-government messaging (Bátorfy and Urbán, 2020). Throughout the country, prominent television, radio, and print have been bought out by businesses and oligarchs with close ties to the government and/or that are dependent on government contracts (IPI, 2022). These organizations have often come under considerable government influence and frequently propagated narratives that convey favourable framings of Russia and/or China and critical tropes about the EU (Hajdu and Klingová, 2022). Similar trends are apparent throughout the region, with Bulgaria dropping from 68^th to 91^st in the Press Freedom Index over the same 2009-2022 time period and Poland plunging from 37^th to 66^th (RSF, 2023).

This CEE media climate has consequently proven ripe for the picking for foreign malign actors that can peddle narratives that prey on salient topics. Any attempts to counter this disinformation must grapple with severe media distrust in the region, the pervasiveness of foreign malign propaganda and influence (including among witting and unwitting actors in the targeted states), and the state capture of the media. The next section turns to spotlighting some of the strategies used across the CEE region to this effect.

The CEE response to disinformation

The CEE region’s vulnerability to malign foreign meddling is constituted by declining citizen trust in the mainstream media, rising consumption of alternative news sources, the dismantling of independent media organs, and/or the development of biased government influenced media. There is no quick or easy fix to the region’s media deficiencies. Democratic countries, in general, must heed media freedom laws that make it difficult to ban problematic outlets altogether, barring exceptional circumstances (e.g. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). Policy recommendations have often suggested that governments introduce and enforce regulations that create a clear separation between public officials and media organizations. Yet such recommendations depend on keen and willing governments that are interested in implementing such measures in the first place and societies that recognize the importance of media pluralism. The latter, in turn, necessitates that media outlets restore citizen trust in the work they are doing. But with populist messaging and disinformation aimed rather at further disrupting this trust rampant across the region, this is no straightforward task.

Numerous initiatives, nevertheless, have cropped up throughout the region aimed at combatting disinformation, fostering societal resilience to info operations, and/or rebuilding media pluralism. These myriad projects include a mix of government, private, and civil society projects. This article now turns towards explicating three types of initiatives, with specific projects selected based on their scale, sponsorship diversity, and focal points. The three initiatives broadly fit into two categories of action – (1) crowddoing activities that leverage broader public involvement to debunk and/or counter disinformation and the actors propagating it and (2) crowdfunding campaigns that seek to support and enhance media literacy through small donor contributions. The paper focuses, notably, on how these cases expand and build upon discussions regarding debunking and pre-bunking strategies such as inoculation theory. While assessing the “outcomes” of these initiatives as it pertains to their effects on disinformation is beyond the scope of this paper, I draw here a few key lessons learned that can be considered in other contexts.

Not your father’s debunking: Leveraging public trust and civil society to fight back against disinformation

Conventional debunking efforts tend to foreground mainstream media outlets, public institutions, and journalists. For example, media-led websites, like Factcheck.bg and AFP Провери in Bulgaria and Demaskuok.lt in Lithuania, provide fact-checking services based on public commentary or misinformation identified on social media platforms. Numerous newspapers across the CEE region, like Dennik N in Slovakia, further regularly publish fact-checking write-ups on a weekly or ad hoc basis. The EU, for its part, carries out its own debunking activities through its EUvsDisinfo website and associated social media accounts as part of the European External Action Service’s East StratCom Task Force. Yet no matter how rigorously these institutions carry out these fact-checking activities, they confront a formidable barrier, namely the high levels of distrust in public institutions and mainstream media outlets across the CEE region. As noted above, even under the best of circumstances (i.e. high media trust and innocuous topics), debunking tends to be only modestly effective. But when carried out by mainstream outlets on contentious political topics in the polarized climate of the CEE region, the fact checks are likely to be dismissed by partisans. And that comes despite the costs and time involved in the fact checking activities and the complexities in navigating online spaces where disinformation is increasingly disseminated.

Innovative strategies towards debunking disinformation and countering foreign malign information operations, consequently, are needed throughout the CEE region and the West more broadly. If debunking is to be more effective, it needs to come from sources that people trust (or at least don’t distrust). One promising homegrown solution to the problem, to this end, involves a group of thousands of unpaid volunteers, called cyber “elves”, that seek to counter the information warfare of the Russian troll army (Klečková, 2022). The movement was launched in Lithuania in 2014 by a handful of people who were concerned about Russia’s hybrid warfare interventions in the region and its aggression towards Ukraine. Nine years later, the elves now span 13 countries (mostly in Central and Eastern Europe) and encompass around 4000 volunteers. The group’s work is conducted independently of governments, though the elves often share their work with intelligence agencies. The different national divisions also share best practices and coordinate their campaigns across borders and within different security circles. And an annual Elves Academy event held in Vilnius, launched in 2018, provides opportunities for training volunteers and establishing informal networks across the region.

The involvement of civil society in countering disinformation not only puts a different face on the “fact checker” but also opens up an entirely different debunking toolbox. While mainstream news outlets need to adhere to journalistic standards in their fact checking operations, the elves can deploy innovative methods including memetic warfare – or the use of memes, satire, and humour to deride disinformation and accounts associated with it (Klečková, 2022). Humour has indeed been recognised as ‘a vehicle for social and cultural [and political] identities to be consolidated, constructed, or even challenged’ (Davies and Ilott, 2018: p. 1). Satire’s effectiveness particularly lies in the fact that it is “playful and is designed to elicit laughter, while simultaneously casting judgment” (Young, 2017).

It is notable that satirical approaches, however, can be used to empower or disempower. The Kremlin, for example, has deployed comedy as a strategic tactic to legitimize its foreign policy globally in online media spaces among some of the target audiences for its disinformation (Crilley and Chatterje-Doody, 2021). Through state-funded RT programmes, Moscow has produced slick short-form online videos tailored towards youth audiences and that hit upon contentious topics such as political correctness through satire. The use of comedic visual media, to this end, serves as a tool that complements the linguistic and narrative propagation of disinformation – all aimed at legitimizing Russia’s foreign policy and/or delegitimizing the US/NATO/the EU/Ukraine.

Although the popularization of new media technologies and their accommodation of visual humour provides yet another avenue for Moscow to promulgate disinformation, these platforms are arguably even more conducive to anti-Kremlin and anti-authoritarian politics. While satire can, in fact, be used by state actors who frame themselves as the true underdog going up against dominating forces, it generally lends itself better to use as an emancipatory tool for the powerless against the powerful. And importantly, if Moscow is using these techniques to legitimize its foreign policy narratives and disinformation, then groups seeking to counter this disinformation are finding it prudent to play the same game better by deploying satire and visual media to discredit and delegitimize these narratives by leveraging the advantage of scale that social media provides.

The techniques have proven especially effective in resonating with CEE publics attuned to these methods in everyday politics. The effectiveness of the tactics has been validated by activities, for example, conducted by the virtual North Atlantic Fellas Organization (NAFO), an informal online army of so-called “fellas” or internet memers. Their ranks include many veterans or currently serving members of NATO and Ukrainian militaries who have used ridicule to counter Kremlin disinformation and propaganda following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Braun, 2022). Both the elves and NAFO, notably, heed research findings (as highlighted above) indicating that it is extremely difficult to disprove disinformation at the same speed that lies go out and spread. They instead focus on mockery that makes Russian diplomats and disinformation actors appear absurd to undermine their messaging. While the “whataboutism” narrative, e.g., has long proved to be a tried and true effective tactic for Moscow dating back to the Cold War, the information warfare efforts of groups like the elves and NAFO turn such arguments on their head by making such rhetoric appear the mark of a fool (e.g. through memes that depict Russian diplomats and useful idiots as only capable of spitting out particular words – “What about…” - like robots) (see: @SamDunnet1, 2023).

And though the Kremlin is skilled with responding to ordinary info ops carried out in conventional channels, the cyber warriors point out that they use the volume and scale possible on social media to swarm Moscow’s capacities in this area. Any attempts to reply to the posters (the NAFO battalion members often feature Shiba Inu dogs in their avatars), meanwhile, only further diminishes the stature of Russian officials. One especially notable episode showcasing the power of NAFO’s satire saw Russian diplomat Mikhail Ivanovich run off Twitter for a week after he was incessantly mocked for his comments blaming Ukraine for Russia’s aggression (Gault, 2022). His subsequent retort that “you pronounced this nonsense, not me” has become a catchphrase and rallying cry for the movement.

In contrast, when the elves and NAFO posters release such content through their own communication platforms, the ‘messages’ are also more likely to be picked up and amplified by influencers on social media and further disseminated by policymakers and elites who would otherwise not create the original content on their own. For example, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, among others, have successfully amplified NAFO memes through reposts (Germain, 2023). On any given day, more than 5000 Twitter posts linked to NAFO are tweeted out on the platform (with numerous spoof videos appearing on TikTok too) (Scott, 2022). The “fellas” also come equipped with collective defence protocols – whenever pro-Kremlin disinformation is spotted on the platform, a poster can invoke NAFO’s Article5 hashtag (referencing NATO’s own collective security clause) calling on peers to join in.

In addition to their efforts in directly debunking trolls by posing as real users, the elves, for their part, also mine and collect data from publicly available sources, including the public profiles of Russian sympathizers, chain emails, and “secret” troll groups that they infiltrate (Klečková, 2022). This information is used by different national affiliations of elves to analyse the latest trends, strategies, and tactics of disinformation actors in their respective locales. The Czech chapter’s monthly public reports, for instance, have facilitated journalists and policymakers in understanding and combatting the information operations underworld. The Czech elves also played an instrumental role in tracking, monitoring, and compiling Russian-sponsored disinformation following Prague’s 2020 removal of a statue celebrating Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev (Klečková, 2022). This intelligence gathering effort was critical to subsequent moves to hold Moscow accountable for its foreign meddling. A group of “legal elves”, moreover, target major disinformation portals that host hate speech, hoaxes, or threats to national security. These elves also focus their lawsuits on prominent “useful idiots” – people in Western countries susceptible to misinformation and who aid and abet the activities of hostile regimes against the interests of their own countries (Klečková, 2022). Combined with the intelligence and debunking activities of other elves, these efforts provide an effective means to deter the peddling of disinformation on various social media and alternative news platforms.

Yet another strategy to debunking can involve delegating the work to specific government institutions that boast higher trust levels with the public. Even as parliaments and national governments, for instance, have lost the confidence of their constituents (ranging around 30%–60% across the CEE region), national militaries and police forces tend to still retain their popularity, with trust in the armed forces at 67% across nine CEE countries (GLOBSEC, 2022). Slovakia, in this vein, has sourced debunking operations to the communications department of its national police force. Its anti-hoax Facebook page, which focuses both on online fraud and disinformation, boasts nearly 150,000 followers, the largest following of any “fact checking” service in the country (Communication and Prevention Department of the Presidium of the Police Force, 2022). The posts and campaigns of the group, such as an ongoing “hoaxes don’t stick to me” sticker campaign, are also often further amplified by the primary Slovak Police Facebook page, which itself enjoys over 500,000 followers (Slovak Police, 2023). By comparison, as of September 2023, the Facebook page of Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová has 383,000 followers, while former Prime Minister Robert Fico, who is contesting the country’s September 2023 elections, garners 225,000 followers. The police anti-hoax page, managed by a former tabloid journalist, regularly features bombastic headlines, videos, and images to capture attention (Kováč, 2020). Over the past several years, the page has debunked hundreds of cases of hoaxes and false information about a range of topics such as vaccines, chemtrails, the US troop presence in Slovakia, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Slovak Police Force stresses that disinformation is a security matter, with COVID-19 disinformation contributing to numerous deaths and hybrid war “jeopardizing the safety of all residents and the democratic foundations” of the country by sowing chaos and undermining trust in public institutions (SITA, 2023). The apparent success of the strategy corroborates and dovetails with recent findings indicating that “culturally aligned messages and messengers are more likely to be successful” when it comes to countering climate change disinformation (Lewandowsky, 2021).

These debunking strategies in the CEE region underscore the broader need for new methods that, rather than relying solely on media fact checking organizations, leverage popular public institutions and keen members of civil society to conduct these activities. Though anti-systemic segments of society tend to garner outsized media attention, there are also sizeable pro-democracy and pro-Western contingents in society. Far from being disinterested, these democracy supporters can serve as a bulwark against propaganda and malign influence efforts. Governments and NGOs would be prudent to lend their backing to these causes and steer their information warfare strategies towards these more targeted tactics.

Fostering resilience to disinformation – towards broad-spectrum pre-bunking

The CEE region’s place at the centre of information warfare has also made it an effective testing ground for different pre-bunking strategies and a laboratory for various civil society groups to devise responses on their own to inoculate society from disinformation. There are broadly two different approaches to fostering resilience to disinformation through pre-bunking that are apparent across the CEE region. The first pertains to the strategy that numerous laboratory studies have experimented with, namely equipping members of the public with training on recognizing disinformation techniques. To this end, Google, in cooperation with disinformation researchers, launched an extensive campaign in 2022 in Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia that provided training forewarning participants about disinformation and how it functions (Struhárik, 2023). The training transpired via two one-minute videos (on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok), with both using false narratives frequently spread about Ukrainian refugees in the three societies (a topic fresh in the news) as a vehicle to teach users about disinformation techniques. One video, namely, focused on the use of the scapegoating method (spotlighting how the tactic is misused to blame Ukrainian refugees on the housing shortage) and the other the use of fear mongering (highlighting the use of the technique by disinformation actors to distract the public from other issues by frightening people about refugees when, in fact, no danger exists).

The videos reached substantial shares of internet users in each country – 24% in Poland (9.1 million people), 37% in Czechia (3.9 million people), and 42% in Slovakia (2.3 million people) (Struhárik, 2023). The search engine and social media giant subsequently assessed the effects of the intervention against a control group that had not been exposed to the pre-bunking videos via a survey that tested their ability to detect manipulation. Though there was a modestly positive effect in Poland from viewing the videos with respect to different survey questions (around 1.9–2.3 percentage points for those who viewed at least part of the videos and 3.4–3.8 percentage points for people who viewed the entire videos) and a smaller effect in Czechia, there was no apparent effect at all in Slovakia. The researchers have speculated that the campaign in Slovakia may have failed to resonate with the public due to the use of dubbing in that context. Another research avenue that could be explored concerns optimizing the design/storyline of the videos to make them more effective.

The effects, all told, were relatively small, with the long-term effects still unknown (but likely even smaller based on prior research on pre-bunking). Such campaigns are, undoubtedly, also not cheap. It should, nonetheless, be noted that the measured effects were based merely on the viewing of one-minute videos, underscoring the potential promise of pre-bunking campaigns if they repeatedly reach and engage people. If the viewing of a one-minute video, in other words, can inoculate an additional 2%–3% of the population against disinformation, what can repeat exposure to numerous different forms of education accomplish over an extended period? While this is a question for further research, the initial results appear potentially promising. And the case for this type of training is central to the second pre-bunking strategy that has garnered attention in the region – disinformation and news literacy education in schools.

A second strategy has indeed emphasized improving primary and secondary school education on critical thinking, media literacy, and disinformation. This approach draws on studies finding that media literacy programmes improve the news literacy of teenagers, especially if the lessons are directed towards news media literacy (Kleemans, M. and Eggink, G., 2016). Though some EU countries, like Finland, have found success in introducing this media literacy into school curricula and adult education programmes, universal EU guidelines only emerged following the Commission’s publication of a handbook on combatting disinformation and promoting digital literacy (Szicherle, 2023). The move is a necessary step that addresses findings from a 2019 Political Capital study that found that educators were too overburdened and under-trained to teach students about these topics (Szicherle, 2023). Teachers, moreover, had requested such guidelines and/or supplementary classroom materials to incorporate the topic into their classes. The task now stands to ensure these guidelines reach educators and to systematically organize professional development training courses in Member States.

While EU policies can play their part, progress will also depend on cooperation from EU Member States. Yet the Member States most likely to participate in these programmes are presumably also those that are already implementing similar policies. Governments that themselves have embraced disinformation and media capture (i.e. Hungary), meanwhile, may eschew such initiatives. It is this gap where civil society can assume a more prominent role to ensure these professional development opportunities and relevant educational materials are available to schools and educators.

Indeed recognizing the deficit of education materials on disinformation and related topics in the Slovak (and Hungarian) language, the independent Slovak newspaper, Dennik N, has published 20 educational magazines and materials (freely available in print and pdf format) subsequently distributed to schools over the past 5 years (Denník N, 2023). The outputs include a bilingual magazine for both Hungarian and Slovak primary and secondary schools that dispels historical myths about Hungary and Slovakia, a magazine for high school students specifically targeted to disinformation, financial support for independent media in Ukraine, and materials about the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust. Dennik N points out that it gives priority and emphasis to schools and regions it considers most vulnerable to malign information (Denník N, 2022b). And the materials are all developed by relevant experts based on teacher input.

But what is most notable about the initiative is that the outputs are primarily crowdfunded by the Slovak public. Dennik N, namely, communicates information about its different project proposals on its website and the needed funding levels for different scopes of distribution and then puts out a call for donations from its readers (with a thermometer indicating progress towards its goals). The campaigns typically far surpass their targets. The disinformation magazine, for example, saw the newspaper raise nearly 18 000 out of the necessary 10 000, sufficient to send the materials to over 550 schools and 19,000 students (and fund additional outreach/training efforts for schools in vulnerable parts of the country) (Denník N, 2023). And the historical myths magazine attained 360% of its initial goal, enabling its distribution to thousands of students in both Slovakia and Hungary. Like the public engagement with the Elves project, this activity underscores the concerted interest of pro-democracy and pro-Western subsets of society to bolster the democratic foundations of their countries and counter disinformation and foreign malign influence.

While Dennik N’s editors have long hosted public debates and discussions about policy issues, the newspaper also recently experimented with deploying the crowdfunding format to finance discussions and visits at schools on disinformation-related themes (Denník N, 2022c). The impetus came following a viral video conversation between a group of Slovak supporters of Vladimir Putin and Filipp Sedov, a young Russian immigrant and political science graduate from Yaroslavl living in Slovakia. Sedov, in the video, explains his opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the despondent crowd. Dennik N, subsequently, launched a crowdfunding initiative to facilitate visits of young Russian dissidents, including Sedov, to primary and secondary schools across Slovakia for discussions with students. In the visits, Sedov explains his story, shares information about life in Russia, discusses his motivations for leaving Russia, and answers questions from students (Šnídl, 2022).

This approach comes with numerous advantages, especially in a relatively small country where dozens of visits to large groups of students – with a diverse range of views - at schools are possible. While partisans may dismiss journalists, mainstream outlets, or political leaders reporting on Russian conduct, Dennik N notes that “it is nearly impossible to question a person who comes from Russia and even lived there until recently” (Denník N, 2022c). They add that “personal engagement can leave a deeper mark than obtaining information via the Internet or second-hand”. The events are additionally facilitated/moderated by two experts with experience on disinformation and outreach to schools. And like the educational materials, the organizers have placed particular emphasis on prioritizing visits to Central and Eastern Slovakia, areas more vulnerable to disinformation and prone to believing conspiracy theories.

While there have been no attempts to measure attitudinal change from Sedov’s visits, research on guest speakers/discussions more generally reveals promising results. Numerous studies have found that such events can shift views, for instance, on exonerees, the needs of persons with disabilities, and career choices (Metrejean et al., 2002; Ricciardelli and Clow, 2012; Tracy and Graves, 1996; Zorek et al., 2011). Sedov reports that audiences have been moved by and receptive to his personal anecdotes about life under an authoritarian regime. To this end, for those open-minded towards Putin, the discussions may at least begin raising doubts and questions about some of the disinformation that they have encountered. And for those already disinclined towards believing disinformation, the events may further validate and cement those views. Sedov, for instance, noted that students supportive of Ukraine appreciated that he “provides them arguments” to work with (Šnídl, 2022).

Crowdfunding media pluralism

The Dennik N crowdfunding and subscription model also helpfully provides a potential answer to concerns about the decline of media pluralism in the region. The loss of independent outlets in Hungary, notably, has impacted access to reliable news information for Hungarian language news consumers in both Hungary and Slovakia (RSF, 2023). The space has instead been filled by alternative portals and media organs affiliated with Hungary’s Fidesz government. To address this media vacuum, Dennik N launched a campaign in 2022 to establish a Hungarian language version of its platform, Napunk, staffed with its own team of journalists to cover relevant events and news both in Hungary and Slovakia. Fuelled by support from over 1100 donors, the proposal obtained nearly 100 000 for its launch, sufficient to sustainably publish at least two original articles a day and manage a Hungarian language daily news live blog (Denník N, 2022d).

The Napunk project, managed by an 11-member independent editorial board, officially went live in May 2022 (Napunk, 2022). In the future, it will be primarily funded by paid subscribers, with ad revenue supplementing this funding. The newspaper touts that its model enables it to operate independently of political and business interests. This type of unbiased coverage is becoming increasingly difficult to find in the Hungarian media, with research pointing to a “clear framing bias in pro-governmental media” premised on derogatory tones and dog-whistle rhetoric (Susánszky et al., 2022).

But Napunk is not the only new crowdfunded Hungarian-language news source in town. Following alleged government interference in Index, a formerly independent publication, nearly the entire 90 member staff resigned in protest in 2020. The team subsequently launched a new publication, called Telex, based on a similar initiative that secured one million euros in funding from readers (Holdis and Spike, 2021). Most remaining independent publications in Hungary, in fact, obtain their revenue from international grants, subscriptions, and crowdfunding. But the grants- and crowdfunding models both could be at risk following Orbán’s election victory in 2022. A 2021 proposal, for instance, put forward a plan to require donors, including microdonations, to be reported to authorities, which could discourage individuals from making donations (Mong, 2022). While Fidesz-leaning media outlets gained an advantage through state advertising favouritism, the Napunk/Telex crowdfunding/subscription model, nevertheless, underlines a path forward for developing and bolstering independent outlets in countries where government regulations and restrictions may stifle their business models and/or undue pressure may be exerted against potential investors.

Conclusion

The propagation of disinformation by hostile foreign states is likely to continue into the foreseeable future, especially as governments build out their hybrid warfare arsenals. Both Russia and China have invested considerable funds into developing propaganda and vast networks to disseminate it. Though the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and disputes between several CEE governments and China have all witnessed CEE backing for the EU and NATO surge, the vulnerabilities that make the region’s population susceptible to disinformation are still present. And not everyone is on board. Divided public attitudes towards Ukrainian refugees and Russia’s aggression in some countries, for example, underscores the ability for disinformation to still polarize and paralyze societies. The EU, national governments, and civil society, therefore, would be prudent to seize this moment to address remaining vulnerabilities and prevent foreign malign actors from seeping in. The harmful effects of pandemic and geopolitical disinformation underline the enormity of the moment.

But to secure progress, there is a need to go beyond prescriptions that merely suggest “more critical thinking”, “digital literacy”, and “media freedom” (Bokša, 2019). The question concerns how to get there in a region where political polarisation and high levels of societal distrust of the mainstream media and public institutions have diminished the effectiveness of conventional approaches to combatting disinformation. Rather than solely relying on mainstream institutions to conduct “fact checking” in the CEE region, the cases explored here indicate that debunking and pre-bunking efforts could benefit by drawing on civil society and popular public institutions, like the police, that are less readily dismissed by cynical members of society. The deployment of a broader arsenal of innovative tools, such as satire, visual media, and memes, that lampoon foreign adversaries and the narratives they propagate appears promising too. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of Google’s pre-bunking videos underlines the value of campaigns aimed at inoculating the public from disinformation by improving public education and awareness about its techniques.

While disinformation may appeal to significant swaths of people across the CEE region, there are also sizeable shares of the population that, if provided direction, are keen and willing to participate in initiatives to protest corruption and illiberal policies, contribute to news literacy education, and build media pluralism. The EU and national governments should, undoubtedly, devise rigorous standards to promote news literacy in schools, restore public trust in public broadcasters, and ensure press freedoms. But the public can also be a source of revenue for funding projects and sustaining good journalism, especially across smaller regions and towns where residents rely on fewer news sources (sometimes only government-affiliated outlets) and/or alternative portals. While the CEE region has been subjected to a dangerous feedback loop where media distrust and disinformation reinforce one another, efforts to improve the overall information environment may help reverse declining media trust and send the region into a virtuous cycle where news literacy begets more demand for quality journalism that eradicates the disinformation plague.

The crowddoing and crowdfunding strategies explored here, in this regard, can all complement a broader analytical understanding of countermeasures to disinformation, particularly as the global media landscape continues to evolve and conventional approaches confront numerous challenges. While the campaigns of the Elves, NAFO, and the Slovak Police, for example, appear to have gained salience, they ultimately need to be measured against alternative avenues as part of a comprehensive research programme. Such an agenda can contribute to a normative critical project aimed at rooting out harmful disinformation in societies by fostering resilience and mitigating vulnerabilities.