Structural indicators to assess effectiveness of the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation

Abstract

The key instrument of the European Union’s policy against disinformation – the Code of Practice on Disinformation - in its improved version seeks to adopt structural indicators to examine the disinformation phenomenon and gauge effectiveness of the Code in suppressing it both in individual EU member states and in the EU as a whole. The paper outlines the process and the proposal for an initial set of approaches and metrics towards building such structural indicators. This initial proposal is a pioneering attempt placed in a policy framework of the self-regulatory Code, and with consideration that empirical research on online disinformation in Europe is limited and there are no systematic and cross-country comparable insights on how the problem evolves in its various dimensions. The proposal described in this paper should thus be seen as a minimum and first step in what should be a wider and more systematic attempt to monitor disinformation and related policy effectiveness in Europe.

Keywords: Code of Practice on Disinformation; Structural Indicators; EU policy; monitoring disinformation; monitoring policy effectiveness