Unofficial and official disinformation

If Europe is slowly emerging from the emergency of the pandemic, the problem of disinformation campaigns, spread through the network, coming from other states, continues to be present and represents a destabilizing factor within a population that is not in able to filter the large mass of information available. Essentially the phenomenon can be divided into two main parts: the first concerns non-institutional propaganda, which is expressed through the action of companies formally not expressions of governments, but which their work makes functional to the national institutions of origin, although these do not officially recognize them. The second strand, on the contrary, refers precisely to characters who hold institutional positions and do their work of disinformation through official channels. The first group includes organizations, above all, Chinese and Russian, which carry out real disinformation campaigns with the aim of influencing and directing European public opinion towards favorable provisions in Moscow and Beijing. The lack of official channels provokes the Russian and Chinese governments from formal accusations, because these sources are officially disregarded by the executives accused of being the instigators of the false news. In addition to the intention to improve its image internationally, the main intentions are to compromise the democratic debate by favoring the most extreme positions and therefore increase the division present in European societies, where the greatest consequence has been the birth of sovereignty and the anti-Europeanism, which resulted in the most significant consequences produced by the false information campaigns. After all, even before the pandemic, the incessant action of the hackers had developed above all on the occasion of the election appointments to direct the vote towards solutions deemed more favorable for undemocratic states. The pandemic offered an even easier way to try to influence public opinion, especially regarding the alleged real responsibilities of the times, ways and causes of the spread of the infection. The Chinese attitude, in this sense, has raised several concerns about the origin of the infection and its effective containment, especially in the initial stages, which has caused a defensive attitude of the Beijing government, often implemented with dubious tactics. These actions must be framed in broader policies that can be considered as real acts of hostility towards countries where democratic orders are in place and therefore potentially harmful to regimes that have problems with internal dissent. Attempts to occult destabilization must make those who are members of the European Union reflect, both at the individual nation level and as a whole, on the real loyalty of states that attempt to boycott them. This must apply both politically and commercially, because entering into ever closer agreements with non-loyal countries can facilitate the job of introducing organizations that attempt destabilization. For Brussels, the conditions have now been created for implementing forms of cyber defense at Community level, which require more substantial budgets. Prevention must be at the source, that is, in contrast to these organizations, since adequate education of internet users is almost impossible for age groups already over forty years of age and can only be undertaken with careful training aimed at older age groups Young people. However, the high average age of the European populations and the scarce habit of discerning the news, which has come with an increasingly pushed use of new technologies, also at the working level, constitutes a facilitation of the penetration of false and misleading news. This condition also facilitates false news that comes from institutional profiles, the most striking examples of which are the US President, Trump and the Brazilian one, Bolsonaro. Often the internet user does not distinguish personal opinion from false news and what, in the end, is only an opinion, becomes misleading information. The theme here is to use institutional channels to provoke repercussions also on foreign states; the contrast to these operations, in some ways, is even more difficult because the only possible contrast is to ensure an official response that is contrary and punctual, capable of involving the same audience. The game concerning the network and the search for countermeasures to disinformation are played on these plans.