Divided and exploited? : A quantitative study on the effects of polarization on foreign disinformation campaigns in Europe.

Sammanfattning

The relationship between polarization and disinformation remains contested, and relatively few quantitative studies have examined this relationship at the macro-level. This study investigates whether polarization of society is associated with higher levels of foreign disinformation campaigns at the country-year level in Europe. Departing from existing literature, the theoretical framework suggests that polarization may create more segregated information environments, potentially increasing the vulnerability of states to disinformation efforts. Based on this argument, this study tests the hypothesis that more polarized societies will be targeted with higher levels of disinformation campaigns by foreign governments. Using expert-rated measures at the country-year level collected from V-Dem’s Democracy dataset, I conducted several OLS regressions on a sample of European countries covering the period 2000 to 2024. While bivariate results provide initial support for the hypothesis, the relationship is not statistically significant once including control variables and clustered standard errors are applied. These findings suggest that polarization alone is not a robust predictor of foreign disinformation at the macro-level. The study therefore proposes alternative explanations such as considering other institutional factors or causal mechanisms, and suggests avenues for future research, including more direct measurement of social media diffusion and platform-level mechanisms.