Keywords

On 1 July, 2018, a Czech Facebook account ‘Josef Vyskočil’ posted a short video showing a crowd of passengers standing on the platform of a train station. The video was accompanied by the caption: ‘Masaryk Station in Prague today after lunch time. 1500 migrants from Germany… And the media are silent, share before they delete it’. The second sentence was written in all caps and followed by a puking emoticon. Within half a day, the video was shared by nearly ten thousand Facebook users, and would have been certainly shared by more, had Facebook not taken it down only thirteen hours after it had been posted because the video was, in fact, a recording of a rush hour at the train station in Brighton in southern England (Zelenka & Wirnitzer, 2018, July 7). Still, the hoax managed to reach hundreds of thousands of users, including in Slovakia, where it was shared for example in the Facebook group ’Slovak nation’, affiliated with the far-right neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia (Šnídl, 2018, July 2). It remains unclear whether the post was created as a joke or as a genuine attempt to spread disinformation, as the phrase ‘share before they delete it’ has been used as a meme to both mobilize and ridicule those likely to share such messages. Nevertheless, the rapid viral spread of the video, which became one of the most ‘successful’ anti-immigration Facebook posts published that year in the Czech Republic, illustrates the strong appeal that manipulated online content can have to people’s irrational fears, also demonstrating how easily these fears can be fuelled and exploited by illiberal political actors.

Although the mass-spreading of false information is a phenomenon that precedes the advent of the digital age (Burkhardt, 2017), in recent years it has arguably become one of the most debated issues both in the academic and in the public domain. Scholarship exploring the production, dissemination and impact of various forms of falsehoods and manipulation online—differently labelled as ‘disinformation’, ‘misinformation’, ‘fake news’, ‘online propaganda’, or ‘inauthentic communication’—has been blossoming, especially since after the 2016 US presidential election (e.g. Pérez-Escolar et al., 2023; Kapantai et al., 2021; Humprecht et al., 2020). With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the discourse of mis/disinformation has expanded into the sphere of health communication, as a consequence of the global proliferation of misleading or outright false information and conspiracy theories concerning the origin of the virus, containment measures, remedies against it, and the effects of vaccination, causing what WHO President Tedros Ghebreyesus famously termed an ‘infodemic’ (The Lancet, 2020). At the time of writing, the Russian military aggression against Ukraine provides one of the most recent examples of information warfare, spread both online and via traditional media platforms (Alyukov, 2022; Yablokov, 2022). This has added further impetus to the growing calls for the strengthening of societal resilience towards disinformation and hybrid interference, two factors that, according to many observers, pose significant threats to democracy. This is true particularly for those countries and regions where democracy has already been weakened by the rise of illiberalism and growing polarization (Humprecht et al., 2020).

Despite the global attention recently paid to Ukraine, the majority of research on the contemporary ‘information disorder’ (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017) has, however, largely focused on how false information spreads and operates in well-established liberal democracies, while much less is known about how it operates in other political systems and regimes. This chapter aims to fill this gap by examining the ways in which different stages of the illiberal public sphere are linked with the dissemination and reception of fabricated or manipulated information and false or misleading narratives. Utilizing data from our population and expert surveys, we first explore people’s exposure to misinformation, before mapping the information ecosystems across the four countries and examining specific channels and brands that play a major role in the dissemination of misinformation. After that, and drawing also on qualitative interviews, we examine the prevalence of beliefs that are rooted in two of the most popular conspiracy narratives in the region, which serve to mobilize support for illiberal political actors, and to stir antagonism against their liberal opponents. We then zoom in on a specific—and almost completely overlooked—communication channel which appears to be an important instrument for disinformation campaigns, the so-called ‘chain emails’, which are often shared across networks of family members, friends and acquaintances, especially among the elderly. We conclude the chapter by considering the implications of the observed patterns for media literacy initiatives in the region and beyond, and for the prospects of combating mis/disinformation in the context of polarization and illiberalism more generally.

Given the substantial level of conceptual plurality within this field, it is important to clarify that we are focusing on the broad phenomenon of spreading and consuming false information (including conspiracy theories) without analytically distinguishing between intentionally and unintentionally spread falsehoods, as captured by the commonly applied dichotomy of disinformation vs. misinformation (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017). While there are areas covered by the chapter where the term disinformation, understood as false information that ‘is strategically shared to cause harm’ (Humprecht et al., 2020, p. 495), is more relevant (e.g. when discussing the supply side of disinformation, including Russian propaganda or government-spread conspiracy theories), the original empirical data we present do not make it possible to gauge the level of intentionality with which false information content is being spread.

7.1 The Prevalence of Disinformation in Eastern Europe

While disinformation is a global phenomenon, there are good reasons to believe that Eastern Europe has been among the regions most affected by its rise over the past decade. This is largely due to the intensification of Russian disinformation campaigns following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which emboldened the Kremlin to shift towards more aggressive information warfare tactics (Bokša, 2019; Krekó, 2020). Subsequently, disinformation originating from Russia exploited the 2015 European migration crisis (Juhász & Szicherle, 2017; Braghiroli & Makarychev, 2018), spreading rumours and fake news about alleged threats posed to Europe by refugees, especially those coming from predominantly Muslim countries (see Chap. 5). Designed to increase tensions and bolster anti-immigrant sentiments, this disinformation has also contributed to a decline in EU popularity in the region in subsequent years (Bokša, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic presented another opportunity to target the region with disinformation and conspiracy theories (Moy & Gradon, 2020; Hajdu et al., 2020; Mölder & Sazonov, 2020; Gregor & Mlejnková, 2021; Magdin, 2020). This time, however, disinformation originated from both Russia and China (Győri et al., 2020; Foster, 2021). Most recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has unleashed another wave of state-sponsored propaganda and information manipulation, aimed at stoking up fears of refugees and of an economic crisis, while simultaneously undermining popular support for aid to Ukraine (Takácsy, 2023; VOA, 2022, July 16). Although disinformation about the war in Ukraine has been circulating globally, available comparative research indicates that Eastern European citizens might be particularly susceptible to false information about the war, more so than their citizens of Western Europe (Hameleers et al., 2023).

It is important to acknowledge that the widespread circulation and appeal of Russian disinformation in the region is not driven solely by Russia, but also facilitated by local actors and structural factors that make Eastern Europe particularly vulnerable to Russian information warfare. According to Bokša (2019), these factors include both the ‘usual suspects’, meaning the relative weakness of local civil society, media, and political structures, as well as historical, ethnic and linguistic proximity of many countries to Russia, which makes it easier to for the Kremlin to disseminate narratives that appeal specifically to concepts such as ‘Slavic unity’ or nostalgia after the communist regime. For Krekó (2020), the spread of disinformation among Eastern European populations is enhanced by four specific ‘drivers’. First, feelings of insecurity and inferiority that provide a fertile ground for critiques of the West; second, the mystification of Russia, which makes the country appear stronger than it actually is; third, tribalism understood as ‘an extreme form of polarization’ that incentivizes Russia to exploit existing societal divides; and fourth, territorial disputes from the past, which nurture both xenophobic nationalism and revisionist expansionism (such as in Hungary). Finally, as the discussion of the mainstreaming of homophobia and anti-immigrant racism in Chap. 5 suggests, disinformation is often appropriated by local actors, including illiberal leaders who use false information and rumours to polarize the electorate. As might be expected, not all these factors are equally relevant for all countries in the region. For instance, narratives emphasizing Slavic unity are much more engrained in Serbia than in the Czech Republic and Poland, given Serbia’s stronger linguistic and religious ties to Russia.

Finally, we should note that there are other foreign actors besides Russia that are engaging in influence operations across Eastern Europe. Alongside China that has increasingly been expanding its ‘sharp power’ in the region (see, e.g. Karásková et al., 2020), there is evidence of influence campaigns by Turkey, Iran, and the Gulf states. These are carried out especially in South-eastern Europe, both via traditional (broadcast) media and social media channels (Filipova & Shopov, 2022). Furthermore, the circulation of disinformation is also facilitated by non-state international actors, which are particularly active in promoting false information related to topics, such as LGBTQ minorities, abortion, or immigration. One such actor is The Epoch Times, a US-based global media empire running its news outlets in over 30 countries, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania (Loucaides & Perrone, 2022, March 10). Linked to the religious movement Falun Gong, The Epoch Times has been known for pushing an ultra-conservative agenda and various conspiracy theories, including during the 2016 US presidential election (Žabka, 2020, December 3). Another example of a far-right international actor that is part of the Eastern European disinformation ecosystem is CitizenGO, a Catholic conservative advocacy group founded in Spain in 2013 that engages in online activism against ‘gender ideology’, abortion, and LGBTQ rights, and has been particularly influential in Hungary and Poland (Graff & Korolczuk, 2022).

Whether stemming from Russia or elsewhere, there is widespread consensus among observers that Eastern Europe is heavily exposed to disinformation campaigns aimed at subverting the democratic political system, as well as at destabilizing the geopolitical orientation of the region. This assessment is supported by the results of our expert survey, carried out among selected academics, media professionals and civil society representatives with proficient knowledge of the respective country’s media and communication systems. As Table 7.1 shows, experts in all four countries see the problem of disinformation as significant, with Serbia receiving the highest score (an average of 6.54 on a 7-point scale), followed by Hungary (6.31), Poland (6.06), and the Czech Republic (5.41).

Table 7.1 Threat of disinformation in selected countries (expert survey)
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The experts’ evaluation is closely aligned with the data from our population survey (see Fig. 7.1). The proportion of people who believe they have encountered false information on the Internet or social media ‘during the last month’ is the highest in Serbia (86%), where over half of the respondents (53%) were ‘certain’ to have come across information they believed was false, and a further 33% thought they ‘probably’ encountered it. In Hungary, 76% of people indicated that they had seen or read false information online, with 41.4% being certain about it. The prevalence of self-perceived encounters with mis/disinformation is lower in Poland and the Czech Republic (63% and 62%, respectively), with the Czech respondents being less certain about it (26.5%) than the Polish ones (32%). Overall, it is apparent that the prevalence and presumed societal impact of mis/disinformation—as estimated by experts and perceived by the public—is notably higher in Serbia and Hungary than in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is consistent with the level of expansion of the illiberal public sphere, which has reached the hegemonic stage in the former two countries, as argued in Chap. 2.

Fig. 7.1
A horizontally stacked bar graph plots 4 countries versus the percentage of respondents. The highest values are as follows. No, I have not, the Czech Republic. Yes, I certainly have, Serbia. Don't know, Poland. Probably Yes, the Czech Republic.

Encountering false information (‘over the last month’)

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Apart from asking about the significance of the problem of disinformation in general, our expert survey also included a question about the threat of Russian disinformation. The comparison across responses to the two questions (Table 7.1) is particularly telling and offers further support to our earlier arguments about the relative importance of Russian and other actors (including domestic politicians and media) in the proliferation of disinformation. In the Czech Republic, the mean scores for both questions nearly overlap (5.41 vs. 5.29), indicating that the issue of disinformation is, to a large extent, synonymous with the problem of Russian propaganda. There is a greater discrepancy between these scores in Poland (0.47 difference) and in Hungary (0.54), and especially in Serbia, where the gap between the perceived magnitude of disinformation and the perceived threat of Russian disinformation is by far the widest (2 points). This suggests that Russian influence is only one of many factors contributing to the information disorder in the three countries, and that the production and dissemination of disinformation might be attributed to other actors, including domestic ones.

This interpretation is consistent with arguments developed in Chap. 5, specifically with evidence suggesting that false information concerning the 2015 refugee crisis was actively promoted by domestic illiberal leaders. Finally, the role of non-Russian actors was also highlighted in responses to open-ended questions in our expert survey, with one of the Serbian experts commenting: ‘A more important issue [than Russian disinformation] is that Russian influence is part of the official narrative carried out by high-level officials and, as such, is easily spread via mainstream media’ (Serbian expert, journalist). In other words, it is plausible that narratives aligning with Russian geopolitical interests have gradually become an integral part of domestic public conversations in the three countries—especially in Serbia—and are no longer reliant solely on foreign disinformation campaigns, but increasingly amplified by domestic political elites and mainstream media. Data presented in the following section, which focuses on mapping disinformation news ecosystems in the four countries, supports this argument.

7.2 Channels of Disinformation: Mapping Disinformation News Ecosystems

In order to better understand the scope and depth of mis/disinformation in the region—whether originating from Russia, from other foreign powers, or from domestic actors—we need to take a closer look at the broader news media landscape in each of the four countries, and examine the role that specific news media types and brands play in the local disinformation ecosystem. Given the scarcity of empirical research on the presence of false information in news media content in these countries (for exceptions, see e.g. Jovanović, 2018; Rosińska, 2021), this mapping draws on our expert survey, aimed at identifying media known for disseminating disinformation (see Methodological Appendix for further details on the expert survey).Footnote 1 However, it has to be emphasized that the purpose of this exercise is not to produce a complete overview of the disinformation ecosystem, but rather to point out some of its key features in order to highlight the similarities and differences across the four countries in our study and reflect on how different disinformation ecosystems interact with different stages of evolution of the illiberal public sphere.

The findings display notable differences in the types of news media that, according to local experts, contribute to the spreading of disinformation. In the Czech Republic, the disinformation news ecosystem is mostly composed of fringe, ‘alternative’ online news projects, such as AC24, Aeronet, and Protiproud,Footnote 2 which often promote pro-Russian narratives and conspiracy theories focusing on immigration, LGBTQ issues, the EU and Ukraine, but have a limited reach. In 2020, none of them was consumed by more than 4% of the online population (Newman et al., 2020). The only exception is Parlamentní listy (parlamentnilisty.cz), a tabloid-style political news outlet with a sizeable audience that, according to analysts, occupies a ‘grey zone’ between disinformation and mainstream news websites, as it ‘combines genuine news coverage based on credible sources with conspiracy theories’ (Syrovátka & Štěpánek, 2019; see also Štětka et al., 2021). A handful of mainstream commercial media, both online news and television stations, have also been associated with occasional spreading of disinformation (iDnes.cz, Novinky.cz, TV Barrandov, TV Prima), but are not perceived as a stable part of the Czech disinformation ecosystem.

In Poland, the range of media seen by experts as frequently disseminating disinformation is more diverse. As in the Czech Republic, there is a segment of alternative online portals, such as Niezalezna, Wrealu24, and Kresy, linked with pro-Russian and anti-Western conspiracies and propaganda, but attracting a relatively limited readership. However, unlike in the Czech Republic, there is also a sizeable segment of right-wing conservative media outlets, including both online and traditional media, which are considered by the experts to be engaged in the production and dissemination of disinformation, such as the weeklies Do Rzeczy and Sieci, the daily Gazeta Polska Codziennie, or wPolityce (wPolityce.pl), a right-wing online news portal closely tied to the party Law and Justice, and considered as ‘one of the most opinion-forming internet portals’ in Poland (Winiarska-Brodowska et al., 2022, p. 26). Another important outlet in this segment is the ultra-conservative Radio Maryja, founded and headed by the controversial Catholic priest Tadeusz Rydzyk (Krzemiński, 2017). What arguably distinguishes the Czech and Polish cases the most, however, is the inclusion of the public service broadcaster TVP in the Polish disinformation news ecosystem. In fact, the expert survey (see Appendix) places TVP at the top of the disinformation-prone mainstream outlets, right next to Radio Maryja.

In Hungary, too, experts agree that government-controlled public service television broadcasters (MTV, TV2) and the radio station Kossuth Radio are among the news organizations spreading disinformation. According to some of the experts, the entire MTVA conglomerate—the organization operating all public media channels, as well as the news agency MTI—is repeatedly spreading disinformation originating from Russian sources. One expert even extended this assessment to commercial outlets whose ownership was transferred in 2018 to the government-controlled Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), arguing that ‘pro-government outlets are the most important sources of disinformation and they often follow the lead of Russia Today or Sputnik on topics, such as EU, migration, Ukraine, and liberal democracy’ (Hungarian expert, journalist). Beyond KESMA, the spectrum of Hungarian outlets participating in the diffusion of disinformation also includes high-ranking news websites (Origo.hu) and conservative print outlets (Magyar Nemzet, Magyar Hírlap).Footnote 3

In Serbia, the disinformation news ecosystem appears to be driven primarily by tabloid papers, led by the dailies Informer, Alo!, and Srpski Telegraf (both print and online editions). In particular, Informer—the most-circulated Serbian daily—has been defined as a ‘champion of disinformation’ by one of the experts in our survey, a label supported by empirical analysis which concluded that the newspaper has been systematically employing ‘discursive strategies of deception and falsehoods’ in creating and sustaining a positive image of Aleksandar Vučić (Jovanović, 2018, p. 34). Alongside tabloids, leading commercial TV stations such as Prva or TV Happy are also viewed by our survey’s experts as frequently disseminating disinformation. This, however, is not the case for the public service Radio-televizija Serbia (RTS), which—even if not completely immune to disinformation—sets it apart from its Hungarian and Polish counterparts. Another feature of the Serbian disinformation news ecosystem that stands out in comparison to the other three countries is the continuing strong presence of the Russian government-controlled news agency Sputnik, operating both as a website and radio station (Radio Sputnik Serbia), and regarded as the main Russian propaganda channel not just in Serbia, but also across the Western Balkans (Duffy & Samuel, 2020).

In sum, it is apparent that differences in the scope and composition of disinformation news ecosystems in the four countries are determined by the extent of involvement of mainstream media. While in the Czech Republic, such involvement is relatively modest and the primary channels of disinformation are found among alternative, pro-Russian but mostly fringe websites, the scope of the disinformation ecosystem in the other three countries is significantly greater and involves mainstream media. Especially in Hungary and Serbia, mainstream media clearly serve as the main pillars of the disinformation ecosystem. Together with the active involvement of government-controlled public service media in Hungary and Poland, this finding problematizes the assumption that disinformation in the region is primarily imported from outside and driven by external actors. Rather, it can be argued that especially in countries at an advanced stage of the illiberal public sphere, domestic channels of production and dissemination of disinformation are just as prominent and gradually overshadow the influence of foreign outlets. Arguably, the growing involvement of domestic media in the spreading of disinformation is closely linked with, and partly driven by, the rise of illiberal political actors to power. In their bid to polarize the electorate and boost public support for illiberal policies, illiberal politicians and other opinion makers draw on disinformation—including from foreign sources—thereby turning it into an integral part of domestic political debates. As a result, the rise of the illiberal sphere goes hand in hand with the expansion of the disinformation news ecosystem, facilitating the transition of falsehoods from alternative, fringe outlets to mainstream media channels.

7.3 Captivating Conspiracies: George Soros and the Smolensk Disaster

So far, this chapter has examined information disorder in Eastern Europe mainly in relation to the perceived prevalence of disinformation and the mapping of disinformation news ecosystems in each of the examined countries. In this chapter, we turn to the specific narratives that circulate through these ecosystems, focusing on one particular type of disinformation: conspiracy theories (cf. Engelhofer & Lecheler, 2019). Defined as ‘explanations of events or circumstances that involve a group of powerful people acting in secret for their own benefit’ (Strömback et al., 2022, p. 55), conspiracy theories often combine elements of correct and false content (Engelhofer & Lecheler, 2019). Owing to this, they are notoriously difficult to verify as true or false (Kapantai et al., 2021, p. 1325), making them both appealing and pervasive.

Of the various conspiracy theories currently circulating in post-socialist Eastern Europe (see e.g. Astapova et al., 2020), those concerning the Hungarian-born US investor and philanthropist George Soros have been among the most popular and the most frequently exploited by illiberal actors across the region and beyond (Benková, 2018). Soros has been the subject of conspiracy theories since the early 1990s, when he became actively involved in the process of rebuilding democracy and civil society in post-communist Europe through the Open Society Foundation, which funded a range of civil society initiatives in the region (Langer, 2021). However, these conspiracy theories received a new boost in the mid-2010s, especially following the 2015 European migration crisis. The entanglement of the migration crisis with an already existing anti-Soros sentiment has been most visible in Hungary where it ‘emerged as the dominant conspiratorial narrative within the Hungarian public sphere after 2015’ (Pintilescu & Magyari, 2020, p. 207). The conspiracy story alleging that Soros has been orchestrating the inflow of migrants from Muslim and African countries into Europe in order to undermine ‘the European way of life’—and, more explicitly, ‘Islamise’ and ‘de-Christianise’ Europe (Langer, 2021)—has been actively promoted by Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz party and spread by their allied media. Such conspiracy narratives were furthered in 2017 by the ‘national consultation’ on the so-called ‘Soros plan’ which, according to the government, involved enforcing EU-wide distribution of immigrants across the member states. This systematic smear campaign, led via billboards, leaflets, and television ads, and costing over 250 million dollars in 2017 only (Krekó & Enyedi, 2018), cemented the portrayal of George Soros as number one public enemy in Hungary (Bárd, 2020). The anti-Soros rhetoric, underpinned by conspiracy theories, has been a key part of Viktor Orbán’s communication strategy ever since, and has been used to legitimize his continuing attacks on NGOs, academia, and the LGBTQ+ community, depicting Soros ‘as an arch-enemy linked to almost anyone who opposes his government’ (Plenta, 2020, p. 522).

In Serbia, George Soros has been a popular target of political actors and (mostly tabloid) media too, though the conspiracy theories surrounding him have focused less on migration and more on his alleged attempts to undermine sovereignty and integrity of Serbia via the civil society sector. The anti-Soros sentiments, already present since the times of Slobodan Milošević who banned OSF operations in Serbia in 1996 (see Stubbs, 2013), have been significantly bolstered by the so-called ‘Stop Operation Soros’ campaign in 2017, first started by the Macedonian government a year earlier. The campaign targeted NGOs and human rights activists accused of undermining the national governments of Macedonia and Serbia by siding with ethnic Albanians (Kisić, 2017). While the campaign against Soros has primarily been waged by far-right actors, especially the SNP Naši, rather than by the leading government party as in Hungary, the government-allied media have been amplifying the anti-Soros rhetoric and keeping the conspiratorial tropes of Soros as the enemy of independent Serbia afloat in subsequent years as well (European Western Balkans, 2022).

In the Czech Republic, conspiracy theories invoking the name of George Soros have been peddled primarily by far-right and far-left political subjects (mainly SPD and the Communist Party) as well as by alternative and social media (Břešťan, 2023, August 21), without having a notable presence in mainstream political or media discourse. Nevertheless, this certainly does not mean their societal impact has been negligible. Possibly, the most successful Soros-related conspiracy theory has been one that alleged the 2019 anti-government protests that took place in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary to have been funded by Soros. 56% of Czechs agreed with this theory according to a poll by the opinion research company STEM (Syrovátka & Pinkas, 2020). Recently, Soros has been part of disinformation circulating around the COVID-19 pandemic, asserting that he had been the mastermind behind the pandemic, alongside with Bill Gates (Mejzrová, 2021, December 9). Even the former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš jumped on the bandwagon of Soros conspiracies in 2022 when he shared a hoax about the investigative journalist Pavla Holcová allegedly collaborating with Soros to smear him ahead of the 2023 presidential election—a lie he was ordered to apologize for by the court in Prague (iRozhlas.cz, 2023, August 15).

In Poland, anti-Soros conspiracy theories have also been relatively less prominent in the public domain than in Hungary, Serbia, and elsewhere in the region, including Slovakia (Plenta, 2020), Romania (Pintilescu & Magyari, 2020), and Macedonia (Kisić, 2017). However, they have been promoted not just by far-right actors and fringe media but occasionally also by politicians from the ruling Law and Justice party, including its leader Jarosław Kaczyński, who repeatedly accused Soros for allegedly promoting of multiculturalism and attempting to undermine ‘traditional values’ and the nation-state (Mergler & McLaughlin, 2019, May 27). These claims resonate with deep-seated antisemitic conspiracies that have long been an established part of the Polish political discourse (Astapova et al., 2020). Nevertheless, when it comes to popularity and political impact of conspiracy theories in Poland, the ones related to Soros pale in comparison with those surrounding the plane crash in Smolensk in April 2010. The crash cost the lives of President Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and ninety-four other people, most of whom were high-ranked government officials, politicians, and military officers travelling to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyń. Widely perceived as the most tragic event in Poland’s post-WWII history, the disaster quickly became ‘a breeding ground for conspiracy explanations’ (Bilewicz et al., 2019, p. 84), accusing Russia of a deliberate sabotage that led to the crash. Even though official investigation by Polish authorities did not corroborate these speculations and concluded that the plane crash was an accident, the narratives blaming Russia and/or Polish authorities for the crash have been instrumentalized by the Law and Justice party, for which the tragic event—and its subsequent ritual commemorations—became ‘a turning point in [its] political ideology’ (Przybylski, 2018, p. 56). Combined with the attacks on the government for its alleged ‘collusion’ with Russia to conceal the ‘truth about Smolensk’, the conspiracy played an important role in the electoral victory of Law and Justice in 2015 (Stanley & Cześnik, 2019, p. 75) and has been used ever since to mobilize the party’s electorate and fuel societal divisions (Bilewicz et al., 2019). In the words of Timothy Snyder (2018), the ‘Smolensk catastrophe united Poland for a day and then polarized it for years’ (p. 5).

It is apparent that the above reviewed conspiracy narratives, whether concerning George Soros or the Smolensk plane crash, have become an established part of the disinformation ecosystems across the four countries in our study and have been woven into the rhetoric of illiberal political actors to rally against their opponents and bolster support among voters. However, beyond mostly anecdotal evidence, there is limited knowledge about people’s views on these conspiracies, as well as about the relationship with their media consumption habits. The data from our survey, as well as qualitative interviews, help to fill this gap and. By using these two specific cases as examples, we hope to shed more light on the ways people’s conspiracy beliefs are intertwined with broader patterns observed in the illiberal public sphere.

With regard to George Soros, we asked our survey respondents to give their ‘general opinion about his activities’—a question we used as a proxy for believing in conspiracy theories concerning him (Table 7.2). The most unfavourable opinions are found in Serbia, where almost half of the people (45%) saw the activities of George Soros in a negative light and only 8% evaluated them positively; at the same time, almost one-fifth of respondents had never heard of him. In Hungary, the name of George Soros is clearly polarizing (30% favourable vs. 37% unfavourable opinions) and almost everybody knew who he was. In the Czech Republic, on the contrary, 43% of respondents did not recall having heard of Soros, and a further 11% did not have any opinion on him; and while the balance among the rest is slightly tilted towards a negative view (with the majority of those people over 55 years of age), the figures overall indicate a relatively low presence of Soros-related conspiracies in the public sphere.

Table 7.2 Opinions on George Soros and the Smolensk plane crash (% of answers)
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With regard to Smolensk, almost half of Polish respondents (46%) did not believe that the Smolensk plane crash had been deliberately caused by someone, compared with only 31% who did. This suggests that while the disaster is still a polarizing issue to some extent, the conspiracy theory about the crash being deliberately caused has a relatively limited appeal among the general population.

Having established the susceptibility to these two specific conspiracy narratives, we can now explore their links to people’s news consumption habits. The data (see Table 7.3) show several clear patterns, including a stark contrast between audiences in the Czech Republic and those in Hungary and Poland, pointing to different roles of specific media types in the disinformation ecosystem of these countries. First, controlling for age and education, heavy consumption of public service media is linked with significantly more negative opinions about George Soros in Hungary, and with believing in the Smolensk conspiracy in Poland. In contrast, Czech audiences relying heavily on PSM for news display, are characterized by significantly more favourable views about Soros than those who do not follow public service television and/or radio.

Table 7.3 Impact of different news channels on conspiracy beliefs
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The opposite pattern is observed when it comes to the online domain, constituted by news websites and social media. Heavy consumption of selected news websites is associated with unfavourable views on Soros in the Czech Republic, but with more positive views in Hungary. In Hungary, the same pattern of relationship is also true for consuming news on social media, as it is in Serbia. Likewise, news websites’ consumption is correlated with lower inclination towards believing in the Smolensk conspiracy by audiences in Poland. Messaging apps do not show significant effects when combined as a group, but on the level of individual apps—which we have decided to consider individually based on some of the findings discussed in Chap. 6—it appears that Hungarian users of WhatsApp, Telegram and Viber are notably more resistant to Soros-related conspiracies, while the users of the latter two platforms in Poland are more likely to believe in the Smolensk conspiracy. These results reveal interesting differences in the role that these (still relatively new) platforms play as potential vehicles of disinformation in these two countries. When it comes to overall news diets with regard to political-ideological bias of specific news brands (as discussed in Chap. 3), the analysis shows that susceptibility to conspiracies correlates strongly with having a pro-government media diet. Conversely, people who consume predominantly anti-government media have a positive view on George Soros (in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Serbia) and do not believe in the Smolensk conspiracy (in Poland).

Some of these survey findings are further supported by our interviews, especially with regard to the role of public service media. In Hungary, those interviewees who believed in conspiracy narrative about Soros were generally pro-government oriented, and most of them consumed news from PSM and pro-government media in general. One such example is provided by a respondent (Hun-14, female, 56) who criticized Soros for his alleged attempts to ‘influence the world’ without having been ‘democratically elected’, and for financing NGOs which, according to her, were undermining society’s values. She appears to have come across these narratives mostly from the public service television channel M1:

Interviewer: But does he [Soros] influence people in some way?

Well, um… Those NGOs that he finances try to enforce values on society that most people do not agree with. For example…on how they treat migrants, claiming that they should be paid compensation… […] I hear about this every day.

Interviewer: In HírTV and M1?

I hear it on M1 as well…On M1, this is always mentioned in the news. (Hun-14 female, 56)

In the Czech Republic, an elderly interviewee (Cze-03, male, 65) who voted in favour of the government quoted Novinky.cz—one of the leading news websites, known for tabloid-style coverage—as a source of information on Soros. His opinion had clearly been influenced by the allegations of Soros’ support for the 2019 anti-government protests organized by the civic movement Million Moments for Democracy:

Interviewer: What is your opinion on George Soros?

In line with what I read.

Interviewer: Rather positive?

Rather negative…Because what I read is about dirty tricks he is supporting…The ‘Milion chvilek’ demonstration [Million Moments for Democracy], well… He is just involved in all the bad things that happen around here.

Interviewer: I see. And is this something your read on Novinky?

Not only on Novinky, also on other websites. (Cze-03, male, 65)

7.4 Chain Emails as Channels of Mis/Disinformation: An Eastern European Specialty?

While the above quoted examples illustrate the potential effects of disinformation spread via traditional media, those are obviously not the only channels through which conspiracy narratives and other forms of disinformation are being disseminated in the region. Social networking sites and messaging platforms are, of course, the usual suspects in this area. The data presented in the previous section indicate that they certainly play a part, even if their impact might differ depending on the type of platform. However, amidst concern about the role that the latest digital technologies play in the proliferation of disinformation, the influence of some of the older technologies has been largely overlooked. One such channel is old-school email communication. According to anecdotal evidence, emails are getting out of fashion among the younger generation (Milmo & Packham, 2023), but appear to be holding ground among those who grew up before the social media revolution. Although emails have long been used in election campaign communication (Dommett & Temple, 2018; Baldwin-Philippi, 2017; Lilleker et al., 2015), especially for grassroots fundraising and mobilization (Magleby et al., 2018), academic research exploring political emails is limited, mostly owing to their semi-private nature (Mathur et al., 2023).

Despite the lack of systematic scrutiny of email communication, it is no secret that political emails have been used for strategic deception, propaganda, and manipulation. In their study of 300,000 political emails sent by thousands of political campaigns and organizations during the 2020 US election cycle, Mathur et al. (2023) identified a significant amount of manipulative tactics, including ‘some level of deception or clickbait’ (p. 1). Yet, scholars have rarely included emails into the repertoire of channels used for political misinformation research, possibly because the issue was not considered serious enough (Burroughs, 2013). The underestimation of email communication occurred in spite of the fact that, in the United States, anonymized emails have been known to serve as key instruments for sharing information among audiences of prominent right-wing bloggers, Conservative Talk Radio, and Fox News (Frum, 2012, August 8; Burroughs, 2013). For instance, in his reflection on conspiracy theories about President Obama during the 2012 presidential election campaign, political commentator David Frum referred to ‘chain emails’, arguing that they formed part of an ‘alternative reality’ and ‘shape[d] the worldview of Fox News’ (Frum, 2012, August 8; see also Duffy et al., 2012 who make a similar point in their analysis of chain emails about Barack Obama).

With the ascent of social media as the primary channel of networked political communication, research on chain emails never took off. However, that does not mean that the phenomenon disappeared. Curiously, the only empirical evidence of chain emails being used as instruments for spreading misinformation in recent years comes from Central Europe, and from the Czech Republic in particular, where emails have become an established part of the local disinformation ecosystem (Filipec, 2023; Štětka et al., 2021). While the exact time of the emergence of political chain emails remains unknown, they came to the fore during the 2015 migration crisis, and especially during the 2018 presidential election campaign, which saw an ‘extensive disinformation campaign […] organized by unknown entities through direct-email chains’ in support of the incumbent President Miloš Zeman (European Values, 2018, February 1). The emails contained various conspiracy theories about Zeman’s challenger Jiří Drahoš, including allegations that he was a former collaborator of the Czechoslovak secret police before 1989, a promoter of unrestricted immigration, or even a paedophile. The fact that Zeman won the election by a margin of only 3% ignited speculations about the extent to which his victory might have been facilitated by the effect of chain emails (Syrovátka & Hroch, 2018). Further waves of chain emails were subsequently encouraged by the COVID-19 pandemic (Filipec, 2023), the war in Ukraine (European Values, 2022), and the 2023 presidential election campaign (Žabka, 2022, December 7). The latter contributed to spread falsehoods and manipulative narratives about the candidate of the liberal-democratic bloc Petr Pavel (Plevák, 2023, January 27).

There is no reliable information about the overall volume or exact origin of chain emails circulating in the Czech Republic. However, a non-profit citizen organization Czech Elves (cesti-elfove.cz) has been maintaining an online database of chain emails and gathered over 24,000 unique emails over a five-year span (2018–2023), with over ten thousand collected in 2022 only (Filipec, 2023). According to the members of Czech Elves who analyse, classify, and seek to debunk chain emails, their content is characterized by a tabloid style of writing that appealing to emotions and often contains ‘demagogically manipulative’ or outright false information, including conspiracy theories (Czech Elves, 2023). An in-depth analysis of chain emails concerning the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that ‘disinformation contained in chain emails is supportive of illiberal tendencies’ and concluded that chain emails ‘enhanced the illiberal forces in the country and undermined the trust of citizens in public institutions, scientific authorities, and elites in general’ (Filipec, 2023). Nevertheless, although the narratives of chain emails are largely in line with Russian geopolitical interests, often copied or adapted from pro-Kremlin news channels and ‘alternative’ websites (Czech Elves, 2023; Filipec, 2023), journalistic investigations revealed that not all of them can be ascribed to professional campaigners or foreign interference agents. Rather, at least some of their creators and ‘super-spreaders’ appear to be ordinary Czech citizens, most often pensioners driven by anti-system convictions and prone to conspiracy beliefs (Jandourek, 2023, January 31).

As pointed out earlier, research on political chain emails outside of the Czech Republic is scarce. A rare exception is found in a report on pro-Kremlin disinformation in Hungary, which acknowledges the presence of chain emails among the elderly and claims that ‘their efficiency is much higher than any news portal’ (Bartha et al., 2017, p. 12). To shed more light on chain emails and their audiences across the four countries in our sample, we included relevant questions also in our own investigation, both in the population survey and in qualitative interviews and media diaries. As expected, political chain emails are most prevalent in the Czech Republic, where they are received by 39% of the adult population. In Poland, the share is 31%, followed by Hungary at 24% and Serbia at 21%. Most citizens who receive such emails also engage in their dissemination by forwarding them to other people. This is the case for 53% of recipients of political chain emails in the Czech Republic, 66% in Serbia, and 69% in Poland. The proportion is slightly lower only in Hungary, where slightly less than half (49%) of the recipients of chain emails forward them on. However, perhaps more revealing than the overall prevalence of chain emails is the breakdown by age categories (see Fig. 6.3), which clearly indicates that in most countries, receiving chain emails is clearly associated with age. In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, the eldest age group (above 55 years of age) has by far the highest proportion of chain email recipients, making up 49% of the entire cohort in both the Czech Republic and Poland. Zooming in on those aged 65 and above, the survey suggests that 56.5% of them receive political chain emails in the Czech Republic, the highest proportion of all four countries. In other words, it is safe to say that more than half of Czech pensioners are targeted by this type of communication, and more than half of those participate on their circulation, forwarding them further (Fig. 7.2).

Fig. 7.2
4 horizontal graphs compare the share of people aged 18 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 55, and above 56 years in receiving and forwarding emails in 4 countries. The highest receiving is by the people of the Czech Republic and Poland aged above 56 years. The highest forwarding is by the people of Poland aged above 56 years.

Share of people receiving and forwarding political chain emails. (Note: The graph shows a total % of people who responded positively to the survey questions: ‘Do you receive from your friends, acquaintances or family members emails addressed to multiple recipients that are related to politics?‘ and ‘If you receive such emails, do you forward them to other people?’ The percentage of people forwarding chain emails is calculates from those who receive them)

Full size image

In other countries, age differences affecting the forwarding of emails are much less apparent, which suggests that people’s active participation in these communication networks is driven by various factors and might not necessarily be linked with disinformation. This tentative assumption is supported by the ideological profile of respondents who said they forwarded political chain emails. In the Czech Republic, those who forward chain emails are significantly more likely to be hostile to immigration (85% vs. 64% of those who do not engage in forwarding such emails) and same-sex adoption (45% vs. 30%). They also believe that Russia has ‘little influence’ over the Czech Republic (42% vs. 27% of those who do not forward emails) and that the EU integration went ‘too far’ (58% vs. 40%). These patterns are not observed in any of the other three countries where there are either no marked differences or an inverse relationship. For example, the approval of same-sex adoption is visibly higher among those who do engage in forwarding chain emails in Hungary, Poland, and Serbia. This suggests that the use of chain emails in interpersonal political communication not only varies in its scope and significance across different Eastern European countries, but also has a different function in their respective online political communication environments. In the Czech Republic, it is clearly associated with the spreading of illiberal attitudes and can be seen as an important instrument of the illiberal public sphere. In the other three countries, it is either insignificant, or it might even be utilized by networks of liberal-minded people, rather than by actors attempting to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda and bolster illiberal attitudes.

The qualitative interviews with the recipients of chain emails (carried out in spring 2019 in the Czech Republic, and again in the first half of 2020 in all the four countries) provide further confirmation of these patterns. First, the topic of chain emails turned out to be relevant only for interviewees in the Czech Republic, demonstrating the specific position of this channel in the Czech disinformation ecosystem compared with the other countries. Second, most of the interviewees with an experience in receiving and forwarding political emails conform to the expectations regarding their ideological profiles, as outlined above. In most cases, the content of chain emails that the interviewees mentioned concerned migration, which they were themselves critical of. The most common type was an email warning against the threat of ‘Islamization’ by sharing a picture allegedly portraying Muslim immigrants in a Western European city that could either have been Vienna, Paris or Berlin (often, such pictures come from completely different locations). This is the case with the following participant, who recalled receiving an email with such content. He admitted: ‘I got this email that they were in France, recently—that there Arabs [sic] pray out in the streets, blocking them so that people can’t even go through’ (Cze-05, 42, male).

Another common pattern found in the interviews points to a link between consumption of chain emails and distrust in mainstream media, particularly with regard to their coverage of migration. In the words of one of the interviewees (Cze-09, 45, male), media explain immigration by referring to ‘war, people starving, economic reasons, but there are a lot of young pals who are nicely dressed and they all have cell phone … I read horrible things. And I believe in them’. This statement clearly suggests that the participant distrusts mainstream coverage of immigration and instead believes alternative accounts that cast immigrants in a less sympathetic light, presenting them as a threat. When prompted to explain where he had read such ‘horrible things’ about immigrants, he immediately pointed to digital media, and specifically to emails.

Some participants also mentioned receiving chain emails about immigration during the 2019 European Parliament election campaign, thereby confirming the adoption of this channel for electoral mobilization (even though they operate on a non-transparent basis, making it impossible to attribute them to specific political actors). The following transcript from an interview allows for a more detailed understanding of the dynamics and complexity of the networks within which the emails are being shared. The interviewee, in fact, mentioned receiving chain emails daily, while sometimes he would receive the same email multiple times from different people. Moreover, this exchange also reveals the importance of the connection between mediated and interpersonal communication in the process of reception and dissemination of mis/disinformation:

Interviewer: Do you talk about these emails with someone?

Yes, also.

Interviewer: With your wife?

Yes.

Interviewer: With anyone else?

With acquaintances that I meet. For example, I say that I got an email and they react saying that they would like it too, so I forward it on. (Cze-09, 45, male)

In sum, this evidence confirms the importance of chain emails as potential vehicles of disinformation and, therefore, as another communication channel that can be co-opted into the illiberal public sphere, depending on political context.

7.5 Conclusions

As demonstrated throughout this chapter, the issue of mis/disinformation in Eastern Europe is highly prevalent and highly complex. Both the channels used to spread mis/disinformation and the levels of receptiveness of audiences are far from homogeneous across the region. Despite our analysis focusing only on selected aspects of the information disorder, rather than providing an all-encompassing inquiry, we nevertheless believe that the data presented reveal distinct patterns of dissemination and consumption of false information across the four examined countries that can be linked to different stages of the illiberal public sphere.

Based on the outline of the supply side of the mis/disinformation chain in each of these countries, one of the key observations from our comparative analysis is that the more advanced the illiberal public sphere, the higher the proportion of mainstream media that take an active and regular part in the spreading of false information. In the incipient stage, the disinformation news ecosystem is primarily composed of alternative, fringe media, mostly situated online but without notable audience reach. As the illiberal public sphere progresses towards the advanced stage, the channels of disinformation diversify, and incorporate some of the mainstream outlets, especially public service media, if captured by the illiberal government, as we have observed in case of Poland. Finally, when the illiberal public sphere reaches the hegemonic stage, as observed in Hungary and Serbia, mainstream media assume the central role in the disinformation news ecosystem, both as amplifiers, as well as producers of propaganda and false narratives, including conspiracy theories.

Apart from helping us better understand the dynamics of the illiberal public sphere and its close relationship with the expansion of disinformation, the pattern discussed above also has implications for scholarship on mis/disinformation. Having predominantly focused on Western democracies, existing scholarship has primarily emphasized the central position of social media in this phenomenon. However, by looking at Eastern Europe, we can see that digital platforms are not necessarily the only—or even the most important—part of the local disinformation ecosystems. This does not wish to diminish their significance as channels of disinformation and the risks that they pose to the fragile democracies in the region, especially when they are instrumentalized by foreign powers for hostile influence campaigns. We instead argue that, while acknowledging these threats, initiatives and policies aimed at countering disinformation and building resilience to social media need to broaden their scope to also include channels operated by legacy news organizations, particularly in countries with an advanced or hegemonic illiberal public sphere, where their combined impact might prove to be more detrimental than the effects of social media. At the same time, our explorations highlight the urgency of expanding the demographic focus of projects combating disinformation and increasing digital literacy, which have so far been mostly aimed at younger segments of the population. The findings regarding political chain emails clearly point to the need to pay more attention to the information habits of elderly cohorts who are specifically targeted by illiberal actors and manipulated via narratives of fear and division—an oft proven recipe for electoral successes.