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You wake up in the morning, prepare your breakfast, and sit down to eat. If you had a newspaper, you’d be reading that, but it’s 2025 so you open your social media of choice on your smartphone. You sigh. The engagement-hungry algorithm knows what makes you tick. You read the news about the rising far-right in your country, distrust in medicine and science, superpowers propaganda. Jaded and overwhelmed, you wonder “how did this happen” or “what led us to this”.

If this feels like you, your enemy is called “disinformation”.

Fact vs Fake

While misinformation is just factually wrong information – like your uncle believing that whales are fish – disinformation is when falsehood is purposely spread in order to mislead people. There’s also malinformation which are facts taken out of context to sell hurtful narratives – a misuse of information.
These three together are part of a broader phenomenon we’ve come to know as “fake news”, which has been rising together with social media.
The spread of disinformation undermines the trust in news and authority, creating chaos through deception.

“Literally 1984”

There’s a political concept as old as the ancient Greeks called “divide et empera”, meaning “divide and conquer”.

In order to maintain the status quo – the existing power structure – misdirection created through division is adopted to keep the population distracted. Steve Bannon, former Trump adviser, talks about “flooding the zone” in his interview with Frontline, 2019.

«Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang.»

In other words, overwhelm the news so that the citizens can’t focus on one matter in particular.

It is also true in other subjects, for example in science, where fears are most easily manipulated. An alarming example: despite the proven success of vaccines in history, the antivax movement is at its peak and growing according to BBC. This creating further divide in the population, and it’s often linked to political and economical agenda.

This is the classic Orwellian situation we’ve all read about: control the people through media and information manipulation. Authoritarian regimes have always understood the power of information. That is why, as noted in the Brookings Democratic Playbook 2025, their first targets are often the press and the education system. A population trained to ask questions and think critically is much harder to manipulate than one kept passive or distracted.

Literacy self-defence

What those who thrive on disinformation fear most is not just facts — it is the skill of critical thinking itself. Democracy depends on citizens who can separate truth from propaganda, recognize bias, and resist being swayed by simplistic narratives. But sharpening this ability requires active effort. Instead of succumbing to doom-scrolling or tuning out the news altogether, we must engage with information intentionally.

Equally important is exposure to diverse perspectives. Reading across different outlets, viewpoints, and even international sources provides context and balance that a single narrative cannot. This doesn’t mean treating all voices as equally credible — it means building the literacy to discern quality, weigh arguments, and recognize when a story is framed to provoke rather than to inform. By cultivating these habits, like fact-checking and cross-checking outside our echo-chambers, citizens equip themselves with the most effective defense against manipulation: a resilient, questioning mind.

An effective method to defend yourself is through the CRAAP test developed by California State University, Chico: verify the source’s credibility by checking Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. Resilience to disinformation can also be built through a community approach by encouraging healthy debate and raising awareness in your own social circles, as recommended by the European Parliament.

Conclusion

The strength of democracy is decided by its most neglected minds: those easiest to manipulate. True freedom comes from the ability to think for yourself, not from being swept along by chaos, but from making sense of it and shaping it into order. Lasting change always begins at the individual level. By nurturing our own curiosity — and encouraging it in the next generation — we build the strongest defense against censorship, manipulation, and propaganda.

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