At the event, Professor Lena Frischlich gave a keynote speech on the topic of disinformation and digital democracy, and later shared her expertise in the field during the BR interview. Frischlich is a researcher at the Centre for Digital Democracy at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. The resulting BR24 audio programme “Disinformation on the Internet: Targeted attack on democracy” gives a good overview of the phenomenon of disinformation on the internet. People’s trust in institutions such as the ÖRF or public authorities is being shaken by disinformation. AI acts as an accelerant here: it makes it easy for anyone to create false content in the form of sound, images or video and share it on social media.
And that is the difficulty: once people have seen such an image, it is difficult to banish it from their minds.
Prof. Dr. Alexander Pretschner To the profile
But how can we arm ourselves against disinformation? The best protection against disinformation is the ability of people to check whether content is plausible, says Professor Alexander Pretschner, Chairman of the bidt Board of Directors and Professor of Software & Systems Engineering at the Technical University of Munich. Professor Lena Frischlich also sees the process of absorbing information as a starting point for better arming ourselves against disinformation.
We are only just beginning to understand the complexity of the interplay of disinformation.
Prof. Dr. Lena Frischlich, University of Southern Denmark in Odense
Professor Frischlich also emphasises that there is a complex pattern between the psychological micro-level (a person is confronted with disinformation) and the political level (degree of dissemination of certain attitudes), which she alludes to with the question of group affiliation or the way in which information is transmitted.
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