Dezinformacja międzynarodowa: lokalne rozwiązania | Piotr Sosnowski | TEDxUniversityofWarsaw

Quick Overview

The core defense against international disinformation involves creating societal resilience through a multi-layered approach, culminating in individual awareness and action, exemplified by the Polish 'Council of Resilience' model which integrates civil society, business, and academia to provide recommendations to the government.

Key Points: The European External Action Service identified over 500 incidents of foreign information sphere interference in 2024, utilizing over 38,000 fake social media accounts across 24 platforms and 90 countries. The disinformation ecosystem, actively driven by Russia and China, propagates narratives by moving information from hidden channels (fake accounts) through linked news portals, then to government-affiliated media, and finally through official state channels. Imperva reported that over 51% of internet traffic is automated, with 37% being hostile activity, though this data excludes social media platforms which remain highly non-transparent regarding user verification and algorithmic function. A specific disinformation tactic involved a fake story about the Ukrainian President buying a villa, which was laundered from an anonymous YouTube channel through a fake British portal before being amplified by Russian state media. The negative consequences of disinformation include a decline in trust in public institutions and science, and it fundamentally threatens freedom of speech because users do not know the origin or reason why content trends. Poland implemented the 'Council of Resilience' model, developed by Professor Kupiecki and Tomasz Chłoń, which is a recommendation body gathering third sector, business, civil society, and academics to advise the government on combating disinformation. The fundamental element in counteracting threats is the individual, who must adopt a strategy of awareness, react appropriately by challenging suspicious sources, and crucially, refrain from sharing unverified content.

Context: Piotr Sosnowski discusses the pervasive and often invisible threat of international disinformation, defining it primarily as foreign interference within the information space, which affects everyone, not just social media users, as messages can spread via friends or SMS. He outlines the sophisticated, multi-stage mechanisms used by state actors like Russia and China to inject and legitimize false narratives into the public discourse, highlighting the global scale of this challenge quantified by recent monitoring reports.