OAFP 8080 - Fake news, disinformation & foreign digital interference: key challenges for the future of the EU

Disinformation is no longer a discrete, contained threat: it has become a permanent and rapidly industrialising feature of the information environment, and one of the most consequential vectors of geopolitical and economic competition. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 again ranks misinformation and disinformation among the most severe short-term global risks, second only to geoeconomic confrontation, and describes it as the accelerant that makes nearly every other risk (conflict, polarisation, cyber insecurity, economic instability) worse.

The Covid-19 crisis and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine were the turning points that pushed Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) to the centre of European security. Since then, the threat has evolved on two fronts at once. First, technology. And above all generative and increasingly agentic artificial intelligence has made manipulation cheaper, faster, more personalised and harder to detect: by 2025, roughly one in four FIMI incidents documented by the EEAS involved AI tools. Second, information operations have become tightly woven into a broader hybrid-threats toolkit, combining disinformation with cyberattacks, illicit finance, vote-buying, energy coercion, the weaponisation of migration, sabotage and transnational repression.

This course treats disinformation as a whole-of-society problem affecting governments, platforms, businesses and citizens alike. With a continued focus on the EU and its neighbourhood, it examines the psychology and political economy of manipulation; the anatomy of real-world FIMI operations; the regulatory and deterrence toolbox (DSA, the Code of Practice, the EU AI Act, sanctions, etc.); and the growing market for both attack and defence. Recent electoral cycles in Eastern Europe (from the annulment and 2025 rerun of the Romanian presidential election to Moldova’s 2024-2025 presidential, referendum and parliamentary votes) serve as the course’s central laboratories for understanding interference, resilience and the limits of regulation.

This course is open to all master students interested in how new technologies impact political communication, policymaking, EU values and the functioning of our democracies. A basic understanding of the functioning of the European Union is expected.

Group case study (30%) and an end-of-semester paper 70%