Elite Panic Drives Efforts to Regulate Misinformation

In a year marked by unprecedented global democratic participation, political leaders and media institutions sounded alarm bells over the potential threats of digital disinformation to election integrity. However, as elections in major democracies unfolded, these fears proved largely unfounded, creating a stark contrast between elite warnings and electoral realities.

Approximately half of the world’s adult population—around 2 billion voters—participated in elections across major democracies in 2024, including the United States, European Union, France, United Kingdom, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Taiwan, Mexico, and India. Rather than celebrating this democratic milestone, many political leaders and commentators focused on perceived threats to election integrity.

The New York Times warned in January 2024 that “false narratives and conspiracy theories have evolved into an increasingly global menace,” while experts claimed artificial intelligence had “supercharged disinformation efforts.” The EU-funded European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) described disinformation as “a pervasive phenomenon” with record voter exposure. A senior EU official dramatically characterized foreign interference as “a silent killer” reaching “tsunami levels.”

European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová employed particularly alarming rhetoric, suggesting AI deepfakes of politicians could create “an atomic bomb…to change the course of voter preferences.” In response to these perceived threats, the European Commission sent warning letters to social media platforms and deployed crisis units to monitor election messaging.

The concerns culminated in European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s pledge at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit in May 2024 to create a “European democracy shield” to combat foreign interference. This initiative would expand on the Digital Services Act by focusing on detecting “malign information or propaganda” and ensuring such content is “swiftly removed and blocked” from online platforms.

These measures followed the European Union’s controversial 2022 decision to suspend broadcasting activities of Russian state media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik. The EU claimed Russia was conducting a “systematic, international campaign of media manipulation” threatening democratic order in member states. The ban extended beyond the media outlets themselves, requiring social media companies to prevent users from sharing any RT or Sputnik content, even when attempting to counter Russian propaganda.

EU High Representative Josep Borrell defended the move with what critics called an Orwellian statement: “We are not attacking the freedom of expression, we are just protecting the freedom of expression.” The EU’s General Court upheld the ban as necessary to stop Russian propaganda, despite no member state being at war. While technically temporary, the conditions for lifting the ban—that Russia must “cease propaganda actions against the Union”—made it effectively indefinite.

When elections actually occurred, however, the predicted disinformation crisis failed to materialize. Following the European Parliamentary elections in June 2024, and subsequent elections in France and the United Kingdom, EDMO reported “no major last-minute disinformation-related incidents.” The Alan Turing Institute, analyzing the same elections in September 2024, found “no clear evidence that such threats had any impact on influencing large-scale voter attitudes or election results.”

This gap between elite panic and electoral reality echoed similar warnings before the 2019 European elections, when then-Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker claimed “the risk of interference and manipulation has never been higher.” Those elections also concluded without significant disinformation campaigns being identified.

Despite these reassuring outcomes, European politicians continued pressing for greater regulation of information spaces. Von der Leyen reiterated her Democracy Shield proposal after her re-election in July 2024. That same month, Cyprus proposed criminalizing “fake news” with up to five years imprisonment, while Germany’s new coalition government asserted that “the deliberate dissemination of false factual claims is not protected by freedom of speech.”

The European Court of Human Rights has historically shown stronger skepticism toward vague or overly broad disinformation laws compared to hate speech regulations, finding violations of free speech in cases involving Poland and Ukraine. However, more recent ECHR cases suggest some willingness to uphold narrowly defined restrictions on demonstrably false electoral claims, particularly when lacking factual support.

The gap between heightened elite concerns and the demonstrable resilience of democratic processes raises important questions about proportionality in proposed regulatory responses to disinformation and the potential chilling effects on legitimate political discourse.