The number of campaigns of Disinformation on the net is, in the opinion of a political scientist, Simon Hegelich, although higher than accepted, their effect will, however, be overestimated.
“Quantitatively, there is much in progress,” said Hegelich on Wednesday in a public hearing of the Committee on the Digital Agenda in the Bundestag. If you put these campaigns in relation to the entire Traffic on the social networks, the extent to be low.
According to the current state of the science is it difficult to measure the impact of, for example, on the choice of decisions or public discourse. “Generally speaking, a lot of talks in the research that influence, if it is happening at all, very indirectly,” wrote the scientists from the University for politics in Munich, in a written statement for the Committee. “Most likely, one would expect such effects in the case of cultural issues, such as Migration, Anti-Political Correctness, Religion, and homophobia.”
About six weeks before the European elections, the fear of manipulation is high. The EU countries fear that Russia could try to destabilise the EU through campaigns of Disinformation. In addition, four state elections in Bremen, Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia this year.
The invited experts insisted on the social networks such as Facebook and Twitter more responsibly. Scientists and journalists need to get more data from the companies, in order to detect, for example, potential manipulation, and to understand, asked about Martin Emmer from the wheat tree-Institute for the connected society. Alexander singers the foliage of the New responsibility Foundation called for more transparency: “The Social networks a lot of data to collect from us, but only a little.”
in Addition, the experts warned that some of the actors, the opinion of campaigns to stir up, moved increasingly in closed systems such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. In addition, it was repeatedly emphasised how important it was to strengthen the media competence of the population.
dpa
