ANTI-EU DISINFORMATION IN THE ITALIAN AND ROMANIAN SOCIAL-MEDIA

Abstract:

Romania and Italy have a long common history, from the Roman Empire to the European Union. They both shared a period of totalitarianism, Italy shorter than Romania and they have both been theaters of regime propaganda. Nowadays the development of social-media and the expansion of internet have led to the propagation of information at the speed of light. Citizens are bombarded with information on all possible channels, leading to the reemergence of an old communicational problem. It’s called disinformation. In a shifting geopolitical context, when information is used as a weapon, disinformation can be a threat to the membership to the common political structure, the European Union, for both countries, Romania and Italy. This paper aims at presenting a comparative analysis of the use of anti-EU false narratives in disinformation campaigns by foreign actors, on Romanian and Italian social-media platform, Facebook. The data was gathered using debunked cases by national authorities and the European External Action Service.

Keywords:

disinformation, social-media, anti-EU narratives, Facebook, Artificial Intelligence, informational war