Weapon and poison? Framing disinformation in European Commission Speeches, 2016–2024

Abstract

Drawing on 238 speeches delivered by European Commission (EC) presidents, vice-presidents, and commissioners (2016–mid-2024), this paper examines how the EC narrates ‘disinformation’. Using topic modelling, text-community detection, and qualitative content analysis, we show a generally self-absolving and fatalistic framing. Disinformation is considered the root cause of unwanted behaviours and events, naturalized as a technological inevitability given citizen gullibility. Moreover, responsibility for the spread of disinformation is externalized to hostile States, ‘bad actors’, and digital platforms. Battlefield and contagion metaphors (‘fight/weapon’; ‘poison/infodemic’) underpin a discursive policy repertoire focused on platform governance, detection/takedown, and media-literacy ‘vaccines’, positioning citizens as vulnerable subjects. Temporal analysis traces shifts from Russia-centred attributions to a broadened cast (China, Lukashenko) and, by 2023–2024, AI-enabled amplification. We argue that this framing narrows problem definitions and answers, imposing top-down solutions instead of supporting democratic dialogue. A better balance would combine fair platform rules with transparency, media pluralism, and participatory channels that treat citizens as interlocutors, so policies are shaped by informed dialogue rather than by presumptions of actors being misinformed.