The Routledge Companion to Media Disinformation and Populism

According to Google Trends, the frequency of misinformation has risen significantly since the 2016 US presidential elections (Figure 1).Disinformation and misinformation are not new phenomenon but, as many authors explain, as old as time old as time.However, distribution has been propagated by social media with most sharing taking place on Facebook (Marchal et al, 2019:2).This has been furthered by the practice of astroturfing and the creation of bots (Bernal, 2018:242; Marsden and Meyer, 2019).Bastos and Mercea found that a 'network of Twitterbots comprising 13,493 accounts that tweeted the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, only to disappear from Twitter shortly after the ballot' (2017:1).The increase in social media manipulation is on the increase globally particular in relation to state engineered interference (Bradshaw and Howard, 2019).Many authors point to ownership structures and the lack of transparency and accountability in the media for the exacerbation of disinformation and 'fake news' inquiry, coupled with a lack of sustainability of journalism and lack of trust in the media.Stakeholders have called on governments and the European Union to take action.Two states, Germany and France, have introduced laws to tackle disinformation.Germany introduced its Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz 1 law in 2017 which polices social media websites following a number of high profile national court cases concerning fake news and the spread of racist material.It enables the reporting and take-down of online content.France passed a law on the Manipulation of Information 2 in 2018 under which similarly obliges social media networks to takedown content upon request from a judge.Candidates and political parties can also appeal to a judge to stem the spread of "false information" under the control or influence of a state foreign media during elections.The UK has taken a more self-regulative approach after a UK Commons committee investigation into fake news by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee concluded that Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg failed to show "leadership or personal responsibility" over fake news (2017).The two part inquiry focused on the business practices of Facebook particularly in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.The UK's resulting 2019 Online Harms White Paper 3 proposes a self-regulatory framework under which firms should take responsibility for user safety under duty of care.The European Union (EU) has flanked national efforts with a 2016 Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online and 2018 action plan.This culminated in Codes of Practise in 2018 and 2019 which have been voluntarily adopted by social media platforms and news associations.This chapter will outline different responses with case studies on Germany, France and the UK.This is explained through existing legal instruments namely, hate speech and strong privacy laws and right of reply in France and Germany