Disinformation and the Brussels bubble: EU correspondents’ concerns and competences in a digital age

Author(s)

Sophie Lecheler, Gattermann Katja, Loes Aaldering

Abstract

European Union (EU) political actors have been heavily affected by the so-called disinformation crisis, leading to intense worries about how EU citizens may be guaranteed access to trustworthy information in the years to come. While there is increasing research on how EU officials, platforms, and political parties react to the threat of disinformation, less attention has been paid to how another crucial group of actors in Brussels copes with this threat: EU correspondents. This paper presents one of the first empirical observations of EU correspondents’ perceptions of the disinformation crisis. We conducted a survey with Brussels-based correspondents ahead of a politicized 2019 European Parliament election campaign, and asked: What are (a) the concerns and (b) self-perceived competences these correspondents have in dealing with disinformation? Our study offers two main take-aways: First, we recommend further studying EU journalism as a complex organism whose concerns and competences are influenced by intra-European differences in press freedom and journalistic professionalisation. Second, disinformation studies in the EU context must no longer neglect the challenges professional journalism faces when aiming to stop false content.

Organisation(s)

Department of Communication

External organisation(s)

University of Amsterdam (UvA), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Journal

Journalism

Volume

25

Pages

1736-1753

No. of pages

18

ISSN

1464-8849

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231188259

Publication date

07-2023

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

508009 Media research, 508014 Journalism, 508020 Political communication

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Communication, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/19664af3-d9fa-4f4d-a6fa-f778a8d29066