DE-CONSPIRATOR

ABSTRACT

The proposed project explores; a) how Russia and China pursue information-suppression tactics in the EU and its partner countries (PCs) and how they construct/strategize these tactics, b) which cases of FIMI have been the most impactful in EU countries and PCs, and how to measure the importance of future FIMI 'attacks' c) which transnational dissemination and consumption networks have been contributing to the success of foreign information-suppression attempts within the EU, d) the social and psychological drivers of which forms of FIMI succeed, e) how can the existing legal, regulatory, and diplomatic frameworks in the EU (such as the GDPR or Digital Services Act) and PCs be improved to build greater resilience against such efforts, and f) opportunities and pitfalls of platformlevel governance that could be improved to improve collective EU and PC defences against FIMI, in an interdisciplinary, multimethod, interconnected and multinational manner. The value of this research linkage is; (1) better understanding FIMI from the perpetrator side for more accurate defense, (2) why trans-European information networks knowingly or unknowingly (misinformation vs disinformation) adopt semantic narratives of certain FIMI attempts and contribute to their domestic and Europe-wide dissemination, (3) synoptically evaluate and methodologically sharpen existing research on cognitive and societal drivers of which topic and content types remain most salient in ‘successful’ FIMI cases, (4) approach the research gaps that exist in this field by providing an interdisciplinary focus by combining political communication, international relations, social psychology, area studies (EU, China and Russia), security studies and computational social science, and (5) present an expanded solution space by creating an interconnected menu of legal, regulatory, diplomatic and technological policy and regulatory options to help counter FIMI in a more coordinated and targeted fashion
 

AIM (WHAT)

The main ambition of the DE-CONSPIRATOR project is to improve the resilience and defences of Europe against Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) and information suppression. The project will focus specifically on two key perpetrators, namely Russia and China. The concrete project objectives are: (i) to understand the technological repertoires and strategic logic of FIMI and information suppression from the perspective of perpetrators; (ii) to identify domestic networks in EU and partner countries that help consume and spread FIMI and information suppression dynamics; (iii) to create a multi-national and multi-lingual event repository of politically significant cases of FIMI and information suppression; (iv) to understand the social and psychological mechanisms under which FIMI becomes successful and generates information suppression in the EU and partner countries; and (v) to explore strengths, limitations and opportunities in legal, diplomatic, regulatory and platform-level frameworks against countering FIMI and preventing information suppression.

METHODOLOGY (HOW)

To achieve its ambition, the DE-CONSPIRATOR consortium will adopt a multi-national and multi-method perspective. The multi-national focus will allow project partners to capture the diverse effects of FIMI in different contexts within and around Europe, while also identifying patterns and trends that might not be apparent in single-country studies. The multi-method perspective will consist of combining big data analytics (e.g., computational network analysis) with qualitative methods (such as archival study and interviews) and quantitative methods (e.g. surveys). Through this approach, DE-CONSPIRATOR will identify patterns and trends, while also gaining in-depth understanding of motivations, strategies, tactics, and effects related to FIMI actions.

IMPACT (WHY)

DECONSPIRATOR will make multiple significant contributions, specifically towards: empowering citizens through enhanced participation and engagement with democratic governance; strengthening the rule of law based institutions and policies; fostering understanding of the challenges facing democratic governance in the 21st century; and improving the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms from FIMI by authoritarian regimes.