The EU publishes a detailed analysis of social media accounts and websites dedicated to disinformation operations. With an online platform to navigate between these multiple communication channels that primarily target Ukraine and France.
Our modes of communication, especially through social media communities and messaging loops, are fertile ground for disinformation campaigns.
The phenomenon is so massive that the European External Action Service (EEAS) – the body that manages the EU’s diplomatic relations with non-member countries and conducts foreign and security policy for the Union – has just released the 4th edition of its annual report on informational interference operations targeting the 27.
To make sense of the nebulous social media accounts and the multitude of interactions between them in an attempt to shape public debate (by highlighting certain topics or biases in news analysis), the EU’s diplomatic service has launched an online platform. It’s called Fimi-Explorer (Fimi stands for the English acronym for threats of manipulation and foreign interference) and allows users to navigate between the publications of websites and social media. These serve as relays and amplifiers of fake news, linked especially to international news and the desired perception of ongoing conflicts.
This in-depth international analysis teaches us that after Ukraine, France is the second nation targeted by foreign disinformation campaigns (among the dozen countries analyzed). The targeting can shift, especially during ongoing electoral campaigns in democratic countries.
These arrays of social media accounts or websites, presented as professional media, simultaneously or successively flood different populations. Thus, Armenia, which votes in June 2026, is particularly exposed at the moment, according to European experts. Meanwhile, in our case, the 2027 presidential election.
These activities are primarily politically motivated but are largely carried out by private actors who commercialize or exchange their services with state authorities seeking to destabilize adversarial governments.
The responses of European countries are mainly threefold.
Firstly, like the Fimi-Explorer platform, the European Union aims to identify and document the digital relays behind these informational pollutants. It involves characterizing their practices to denounce them based on explicit elements. Training and raising public awareness of these practices are therefore crucial to weaken such acts of manipulation.
Next is the application of European law, which holds hosts and major social media publishers accountable once it’s established that the content is false and disseminated from robotic accounts.
Finally, direct actions are also possible. This is the strategy of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which runs the “French Response” account on social network X to call out (often in undiplomatic tones) false news that ignores our country.
This digital palette is therefore mobilized to deal with the variety of weapons in this ever-evolving information war.
