THE POST-TRUTH PHENOMENON AND THE INFORMATION VULNERABILITY OF EU DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES

Abstract

Countering the phenomenon of post-truth has recently become a significant focus of EU information security policy. In this article, the author examines and expands on the definition of “post-truth”, which gained popularity around events such as the Brexit referendum 2016 and the US presidential election, where political campaigns were perceived as facts. According to the author, post-truth is a state where the boundaries between truth and lies, honesty and dishonesty, facts and fiction are blurred, and the most important, in this case, the social advantage of a particular set of facts is often driven by emotions or personal beliefs. The author also explores the extent of research into the phenomenon of post-truth in foreign and domestic academic schools and demonstrates the impact of post-truth on the information vulnerability of European democracy. The article emphasizes that Russian disinformation campaigns exploit existing political divisions and seek to create new ones to weaken European democratic societies from within. This propaganda serves to legitimize Russia’s aggression, including providing false justifications for military action and denying responsibility for war crimes. In other words, Russia’s hybrid war has led to the emergence of a post-truth reality, where emotions often trump objective facts in shaping public opinion. The author demonstrated the EU’s response to the post-truth phenomenon through an analysis of the European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP). Specifically, it was determined that the EU’s current information security policy focuses on, among other things: 1) developing the resilience of European democratic societies; 2) countering disinformation using mechanisms such as the East StratCom Task Force; 3) holding social media companies accountable; 4) supporting EU member states in the “post-truth era”; 5) addressing media interaction in the current context.