content pollution Definition
The European Commission defines disinformation as follows:
“ content pollution Disinformation is defin as demonstrably false or misleading information that is creat, present and disseminat for economic gain or to deliberately deceive the public, and that can cause public harm. Public harm includes threats to democratic political and policy-making processes and to public goods such as the protection of EU citizens’ health, the environment or security. Errors in reporting, satire and parody or clearly demonstrably bias news and commentary are not disinformation.” – ( Combating online disinformation , 2.1)
There are a number of assumptions in this definition:
This concerns information that, after checking, appears to be incorrect or misleading and that is more than just a journalistic error, humor or bias.
There are people or groups who create, present and distribute this information.
These people or groups have a goal: money or deception.
The information can cause damage to our democracy, ourselves and the environment.
Definition of disinformation
Why do something about disinformation
Disinformation often concerns legal behavior . By stating that disinformation can cause harm, it becomes understandable that something should nevertheless be done about disinformation. The potential harm concerns domains for which the government is responsible: democratic processes and the public domain. It is therefore logical that it is the government that must act.
Where the European Commission speaks of harm as an optional outcome, the Dutch government is more specific. It states that the purpose of disinformation is as follows: “to harm public debate, democratic processes, the open knowlge economy or public health.” ( Government-wide strategy for an effective approach to disinformation ).
However, this is not the only purpose: “In addition, disinformation is spread for economic interests. It can be us to sell products, or to make money by selling advertisements that appear next to qatar email list 476676 contact leads disinformation messages (clickbait). Disinformation can also be us to put competitors or their products in a bad light. Finally, spreading disinformation can itself be a product, for example selling a so-call bot network, which can be us to spread disinformation.”
Misleading information
Because disinformation is present as something that can be harmful to our democracy, this type of information falls outside the framework of our democracy. It explicitly does not concern borderline cases such as journalistic errors, humor and bias. It concerns information that does not fall under our freom of expression, either because the expression is punishable or because the consequences of the expression lead to punishable and/or unlawful acts . Present in this way, action can be taken against disinformation without infringing on our fundamental rights.
Enemies
Because of the damaging nature of which can be us in 2025 disinformation to our democracy, the people who create, present, and spread disinformation are by definition enemies of democracy. These enemies have found loopholes in our laws. They present false or misleading information as “true.”
Fortunately, there are ways to defend ourselves against alb directory false or misleading information. Because the information is demonstrably false, all we ne to do is check it to expose it as disinformation. Although the government is responsible for combating disinformation, it has decid not to set up a “ministry of truth” or appoint a “ reality czar .”