Child protection services kidnap children and relocate them to same sex marriage families, to indoctrinate them. This is one of many lies that are being spread about child protection services in Norway, Finland and Sweden in recent years. In some forums they are being considered a main threat and there is a lot of disinformation and conspiracy theories about them.
The Great Replacement Theory is the belief that the white population of Western countries is deliberately being reduced to a minority and gradually replaced by migrants. Among Finnish right-wing populist parties, this conspiracy theory has been used as a rhetorical tool.
These are examples of how disinformation and conspiracy theories are spread in the Nordic countries.
The World Economic Forum recently ranked misinformation and disinformation as the biggest risk ranked by severity in the world in the next two years. This ranks it above both extreme weather events and state-based armed conflicts.
Ela Drazkiewicz from Lund University specialises in conspiracy theories, a phenomenon within disinformation. She is also leading the Nordic Disinformation Resilience Network funded by NordForsk with scholars from social sciences and humanities.
The aim of the network is to provide a better understanding of the levels of preparedness of Nordic communities to challenges posed by current and upcoming disinformation threats. When we talk about disinformation, it means deliberately spreading false or misleading information.
The public debate and research have so far mainly focused on the disinformation and conspiracy threats coming from countries outside the Nordics such as countries like Russia, the US and China. But according to her we should be paying more attention to the ‘homegrown’ conspiracy theories and disinformation threats that originate from communities in the Nordic countries.
“Before Brexit and before Donald Trump came to power in the US, most of the literature focused on the fact that those who spread disinformation and conspiracy theories are uneducated people who live on the margins and who use it as their opinion. But now we should be more aware of the fact that many politicians here in the Nordics also come to power by using disinformation as a strategic tool,” she warns.
Trust and credibility are high in the Nordics
The Nordic countries have a very good international reputation. They are usually highlighted as role models when we look at all the indices on freedom of expression and the level of social and political trust is very high. Some studies have measured the level of conspiratorial beliefs, the Nordic countries rank very low.
At the same time there is no denying that the Nordic countries are not immune to the problem of conspiracy theories. There is always a question of what counts and is considered a conspiracy theory.
“We should allow ourselves to have that kind of conversation and admit yes, we might have a problem within our own countries. If we only focus on disinformation from Russia, we forget that we have a lot of issues at home. Our populist parties in the Nordic countries do spread disinformation or conspiracy theories or benefit from others spreading it. For example, populist parties like the Sweden Democrats. Some time ago they were caught using troll farms to spread false information. This example shows that it's not only people who are naive or uneducated who fall into the trap. Sometimes it is a very strategic, deliberate, shameless, political tool for people in power,” Drazkiewicz says.
How to counter the spread of disinformation
She also says that if the Nordic countries consider disinformation as such a big threat, as the main enemy today, then they need to act. The question is how far are they willing to go? If the goal of creating resilient societies is to support them in their ability to “bounce back” and protect the Nordic values, the Nordics must be first and foremost able to identify the values and structures they want to protect. But when fighting disinformation there are also other challenges, she points out.
"We argue that to counter disinformation effectively, and to build the resilience of our societies we not only have to pay attention to the socio-cultural factors when we analyse the movements spreading disinformation, but also when we examine counter-initiatives – for these are neither neutral nor apolitical," she says and adds:
“Even though Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland share many of the same values, they might also differ due to their social, cultural and political histories. Not only because the countries are different, but also because we have different geopolitical positioning. Finland for instance has higher stakes when it comes to Russian threats, than Iceland.”
The Nordic Disinformation Resilience Network is built on the premise that in order to address the problem of disinformation seriously, especially within political sphere, we need to not only focus on the specific threats of disinformation as such, but also pay better attention to the crisis management. In all emergencies, crisis management is a complicated endeavour. It requires international, national, local and civic organisations to go in sync.
“But when it comes to addressing the growing threat of disinformation, there is a concern that we are not only lacking good coordination strategies, but also a thorough knowledge about the growing sector of state, civic, private and other actors specialising in countering disinformation itself: the Disinfo Sector.”
Hope for justice, good journalism and democratic values
The times we live in are in many ways characterised by a growing worry about the ways in which disinformation, Artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes, conspiracy theories spread and threaten our democratic societies.
What goes under the radar is that for every conspiracy theory that is spread on social media there is quite a big cohort of people who invest their time and effort into countering it. And the established media in the Nordic countries also enjoy a leading position of the Free Media Ranking.
“We focus so much on those who spread hate and lies, who stir the pot, who express concern or doubt about our society, that we sometimes forget those who are still committed to democracy, who are still committed to justice, who are still committed to equality, inclusivity, who want truth to be important, who are interested in rigorous investigation and in good journalism,” Drazkiewicz says.
In the network they want to shift attention from those who spread conspiracy theories and disinformation to those who make all efforts to counter it. It's easy to get discouraged, but amidst all the disinformation and conspiracy theories there is still reason to believe that values such as truth, trust and credibility will endure.
“Truth as a value is not unique to Nordic societies. Most people around the world want to know the truth. I think even people who spread conspiracy theories or disinformation at the end of the day they want the truth as well. It's just how they get to that truth or who provides them with a specific variant of truth and how it resonates with them.”
