Abstract
Democratic backsliding has been a growing concern globally. The literature on democratic backsliding and the literature on disinformation have grown exponentially, but hitherto developed separately. This paper provides a unique contribution to the existing literature by exploring the interactions between the two phenomena. We present a framework that describes this as a cycle of disinformation and democratic backsliding. Through our analysis of disinformation’s impact on democracies, we argue that disinformation can accelerate democratic erosion, which in turn can further exacerbate the spread of harmful disinformation. With the cycle of disinformation and democratic backsliding as its framework, the paper analyzes three countries that are facing different levels of crisis (Hungary, the U.S., and the U.K.). Hungary was selected as an autocratizing democracy, the U.S. as a democracy facing serious challenges to its institutions, and the U.K. as a liberal democracy managing to contain the disinformation threat. We demonstrate that different levels of democratic backsliding are linked with varied levels of institutional capture by disinformation. In the case of Hungary, we find that disinformation has managed a complete institutional capture in a country with pre-existing issues of democratic backsliding, leading it to be trapped in a vicious cycle within the framework. The U.S. shows partial capture, as it struggles with an unregulated information and media environment, coupled with institutional and media distrust. The U.K. managed to contain the threat of disinformation and avoid democratic backsliding, but remains vulnerable against the threat of the “engagement trap”.
Author Information
Marina Fujita Dickson, Institute of Geoeconomics, Japan
Yusuke Ishikawa, Institute of Geoeconomics, Japan
Sara Kaizuka, Institute of Geoeconomics, Japan
Paper Information
Conference: ACSS2024
Stream: Politics
This paper is part of the ACSS2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
Full Paper
View / Download the full paper in a new tab/window
To cite this article:
Dickson M., Ishikawa Y., & Kaizuka S. (2024) Democracies Degraded by Disinformation: Lessons From Hungary, the U.S., and the U.K. ISSN: 2186-2303 – The Asian Conference on the Social Sciences 2024: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 679-692) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-2303.2024.58
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-2303.2024.58
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress