(Women boxers at the Olympics as seen by Ai – Midjourney)
Every three months, we bring you a quarterly Fact-checking brief, a summary of the most widespread disinformation narratives that circulated in the digital space during the past quarter, as well as an overview of the reach and credibility of selected narratives based on data from CEDMO Trends research. This is also the case in the third quarter of 2024. So far, the brief has only been published in English and Czech. Starting with this edition, we have expanded it to include Slovak and Polish translations. This makes its content more accessible to the regions we cover as the Central European Digital Media Observatory.
According to fact-checking reports by the CEDMO hub, domestic politics was the most prevalent topic among online disinformation in Central Europe in the third quarter of 2024. Compared to previous quarters, however, the number of articles on this topic has decreased, mainly due to the slower summer months and the absence of elections in Poland and Slovakia. The September regional and senate elections in the Czech Republic was a major event in domestic politics. Compared to previous quarters, there was a change in the representation of other topics, with, for example, healthcare overtaking the war in Ukraine for second place in the frequency ranking of specific topic occurrence. This is only the second time this has happened since the beginning of 2023 (the start of monitoring).
Main disinformation narratives: floods
In the wake of the recent floods in the Czech Republic and Poland, there has been speculation, among other things, that the governments of these countries “planned” the floods or that systems such as HAARP or 5G technology had an impact on their occurrence. There has also been unsubstantiated speculation that bridges or dams in the affected areas were deliberately destroyed or that mismanagement of flows at reservoirs in the Czech Republic led to more extensive damage in Poland. In Poland, in particular, there were reports pointing to the alleged incompetence of the government in preventing flooding and the lack of assistance to victims. There were also manipulative claims about the merits of individual governments in building retention reservoirs and flood defences. In the Czech Republic, there was a fabricated report about Ukrainians refusing to help people affected by the floods, and a video highlighting the alleged incompetence of the army in building a makeshift bridge. However, this was actually built by a private company.
The main disinformation narratives: the opening of the Olympic Games
During this year’s Olympic Games in Paris, several narratives emerged highlighting various controversial aspects of the Olympics. The narratives often focused on expressions of public discontent and outrage, but these were often fictional. One of these narratives was a false report of a boycott of the Olympics by Samsung, which allegedly withdrew its support because of the ‘woke’ content of the opening ceremony. However, this claim was debunked – Samsung remained one of the main sponsors of the Games and there was no public boycott. Other viral manipulation included a video claiming to show a French audience booing President Emmanuel Macron during the opening ceremony. However, it was in fact an older footage from 2023, filmed at another public event. A photograph of Israeli swimmers carrying a banner calling for the release of hostages from Gaza also attracted considerable attention. This picture was originally taken eight months before the Olympics, and was not in any direct connection with the Olympics, and its use in this context was purposefully misleading.
The main disinformation narratives: the case of the Algerian boxer
In the context of this year’s Olympics, false claims were spread on social media about Algerian boxer Imán Khalifa, who was allegedly a trans athlete. This narrative caused a lot of controversy, but was completely unfounded – Khalif was born a woman, competed as a woman and never underwent gender reassignment. Other manipulations included an alleged photo of Khalif that was supposed to confirm her “transgender” identity. However, this photo was created using artificial intelligence tools and was not a real image. In addition, there were general false reports that men were competing against women in the Olympics.
Awareness of current disinformation narratives and a look at their credibility
Also during October, another wave of the CEDMO Trends survey, which has long been carried out in the Czech Republic (by the research agency Median) and Slovakia (by the research agency IPSOS), tested the awareness of a representative sample of the Czech and Slovak population of current disinformation narratives and their credibility. In the same period, a comparative survey was also conducted in Poland on the same issues. The comparison of the data from each country showed that there are disparities between Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in terms of familiarity with disinformation narratives. The prevalence of misinformation is by far the lowest in the Czech Republic. The lower familiarity with the tested disinformation narratives is also evident in Slovakia, however, two of the tested narratives (see graphs below) are significantly more widespread – the first one concerning “turbocancer” and the fifth one with the claim about “water bombs”. In terms of the credibility of these disinformation messages, the situation is more comparable across the countries surveyed. In both Poland and Slovakia, of the five false messages listed, people believe the one about the carbon footprint of the digital wallet the most (49% in Poland, 37% in Slovakia). In the Czech Republic, a similar proportion of people believe the message about the involvement of Ukrainians in the decision to invade in 1968 (46%).
Satisfaction with democracy
The survey also included questions to determine the level of satisfaction with democracy in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, where we noted notable differences between the countries. In the Czech Republic, roughly 3 out of 10 people are satisfied with the functioning of democracy, in Slovakia it is only less than one-fifth, while in Poland it is more than two-fifths. Poles are also the least likely to be outright dissatisfied with democracy in their country, at only 26%. In Slovakia, almost half of those surveyed are dissatisfied with the state of democracy. In the Czech Republic, about 2 out of 5 respondents are outright dissatisfied with the state of democracy. It is worth noting that in all countries around 30% of people have no clear opinion on this question (neither satisfied nor dissatisfied). The current results of the CEDMO Trends survey do not show that higher levels of dissatisfaction with democracy are related to higher susceptibility to misinformation. Such a link may exist, but it is probably not a trivial causality of two variables – other factors intervene.
If you are interested in an overview of the most widespread disinformation narratives not only in the Central European region, but at the level of Europe as a whole, we recommend you read the EDMO monthly brief, the English original and the Czech translation of which we publish for you every month here on cedmohub.eu in the EDMO Fact-checking briefs section.
