As social media is a key conduit for the distribution of disinformation, much of the literature on disinformation in elections has been focused on the internet and global social media platforms. Literature on societal and media trust has also grown in recent years. Yet, disinformation is not limited to global platforms or the internet, traditional media outlets in many European countries act as vehicles of disinformation often under the direction of the government. Moreover, the connection between trust and resilience to disinformation has been less discussed. This article is aimed at tackling the question of what makes a country vulnerable to or resilient against online disinformation. It argues that a society’s information resilience can be viewed as a combination of structural characteristics, features of its knowledge-distribution institutions including its media system, and the activities and capabilities of its citizens. The article makes this argument by describing these dimensions in four European case countries, based on comparable statistics and document analyses. The results indicate that European-wide strategies do not uniformly strengthen national resilience against disinformation and that anti-disinformation strategies need to be anchored in targeted assessments of the state of information resilience at the national level to be more effective. Such assessments are central, particularly to understanding citizens’ information needs in key democratic events such as elections.

As the literature aimed at defining and explaining media capture has grown in recent years so has the interest in documenting the impact of capture in greater depth. There is still a relatively wide gap between the literature focused on defining and describing the concept, which is rich and increasingly sophisticated, and the body of research aimed at measuring the impact of capture, which now consists of a collection of disparate analytical papers primarily focused on case studies. This paper aims to contribute to this second body of knowledge: building on existing research, it looks to identify the changes that media capture leads to in three key areas: journalism (with a focus on the impact of capture on professional standards and the performance of journalists), market (with a focus on the effects of capture on free competition, market health and viability of investments), and audience (analysing the content limitations that audiences are faced with in environments where propaganda media is dominant).

Despite enjoying a series of advantages and privileges, including access to public funding and technical infrastructure, as well as a special regulatory framework allowing them to reach almost the entire population, public service media (PSM) have historically faced a number of challenges. These include opposition from privately held media and various political parties, mounting criticism from audiences, and incessant pressures from state authorities. Some have been more successful than others in defending themselves against these attacks. Some PSM institutions have gained a high level of trust as a result of their ability to maintain a balanced approach to political coverage. Some are recognised for the quality of their news content. However, some other organisations have lost credibility and audience share as a result of various pressures. The platformisation trend has had a particularly disruptive impact on public service media (PSM) organisations. The challenge of adapting to the new digital landscape has been significant, requiring careful navigation to maintain the core values that guide their operations, as defined by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU): universality, independence, excellence, diversity, accountability and innovation. This article employs a recently developed framework for examining PSM and draws upon field research to analyse the transformation of PSM in response to platformisation-related pressures in four European countries: Austria, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Conceived as institutions funded by the public purse and intended to exist devoid of political influence, the mandate of public service media (PSM) entities is to disseminate reliable news content and high-quality audiovisual productions to all demographic segments, inclusive of marginalized communities and audiences that are typically under-served. Over the previous ten years, the rise in prominence of global platforms in national media systems has precipitated many changes in the media sector, including unique challenges for PSM institutions guided by specific public service values. Using a holistic conceptual framework for assessing the implementation of these values, this article analyzes the impact of platformization on Europe’s PSM and discusses how the Union’s policy approaches affect related challenges to PSM. The analysis indicates that while the European Union (EU) has accorded a high priority to PSM within its media policy framework, the role that Brussels plays in protecting the independence and efficacy of PSM has been circumscribed, given that the onus of regulating PSM entities rests with national governments. This has engendered contrasting experiences wherein certain PSM outlets enjoy political independence and command significant public trust while others function as state-controlled propaganda vehicles, advancing the objectives and interests of governing bodies. The EU has addressed global platform power in recent attempts to safeguard its digital future, including the Digital Services Act (DSA), Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). However, these acts do not adequately address PSM’s two central and often interconnected problems: funding challenges and political pressures.

Disinformation poses a significant challenge to epistemic rights globally, but the phenomenon manifests differently and is promoted by different actors in different countries and regions. The capture of legacy journalistic outlets and the creation of journalism-like sites without journalistic principles and ethics by commercial and political actors have resulted in the significant erosion of epistemic rights in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Based on three mapping projects created by the Media and Journalism Research Centre, formerly the Centre for Media, Data and Society, at Central European University, this chapter showcases shifts in economic and political conditions of epistemic rights in CEE by focusing on entities that violate epistemic rights by deliberately promoting disinformation in the region.