Overview
This module examined how disinformation targeting minorities and migrants operates across Europe, drawing on case studies from different countries and analytical perspectives. Despite national and cultural differences, the examples presented reveal striking similarities: recurring narratives about threat, identity, and unfair advantages at the expense of local citizens, a growing overlap between online disinformation and political communication, and an increasing normalisation of these narratives within mainstream debate.
Lisa Ginsborg opened the module by framing identity-based disinformation as a form of harmful communication that exploits social divisions. It targets individuals and groups based on characteristics such as ethnicity or race, religion, sexuality, or gender, and works by reinforcing existing prejudices, stereotypes, and biases. Its effects can ultimately lead to deepened social polarisation, an erosion of democratic values, and contribute to increased hostility or violence towards marginalised groups.
Most notably, Ginsborg discussed the relationship between identity-based disinformation and speech, noting that while the two can overlap, there are times where identity-based disinformation does not amount to hate speech even when indirectly used to foment hatred and violence. At the same time, in cases in which identity-based disinformation does overlap with hate speech, it should be dealt with in accordance with relevant international standards on hate speech to ensure legal clarity and avoid further manipulation of the disinformation label. The module then shifted from conceptual grounding and legal framing to empirical analysis, highlighting how these dynamics play out in practice across different regional and national contexts.
Drawing from the work carried out by GLOBSEC, Katarína Klingová provided insight into Central and Eastern Europe, showing how migration has become a central vehicle for identity-based disinformation. She explained that migrants are particularly vulnerable targets because they are easily “othered,” namely, portrayed as fundamentally different from the national community. This is amplified in contexts where direct contact with migrants is limited, allowing abstract fears to dominate public perceptions.
Her analysis identified a set of recurring narratives: migrants are framed as security threats, as dangers to cultural or religious identity, and as beneficiaries of unfair advantages at the expense of locals. These are often combined with conspiracy elements, such as claims about EU coercion or Brussels’ elites orchestrating migration flows. Klingová also highlighted how such narratives are not confined to fringe actors as they are often promoted by domestic political figures and supported by coordinated campaigns, including foreign influence operations.
A key part of her analysis focused on how these narratives are constructed and disseminated. Disinformation frequently relies on techniques such as information laundering, where old or unrelated events are recycled and presented as current, the miscontextualization of real events, which distorts their meaning, and the use of manipulated or fabricated visuals.
Through concrete examples, including the “Lisa case” in Germany, the weaponisation of the migration crisis at the Belarus border, and election manipulation narratives in the region, she demonstrated how disinformation can escalate beyond online discourse, influencing protests, public perception, and even international relations.
Yitsz Neurink complemented this perspective with a fact-checking analysis from the Netherlands and Flanders. Through a review of 60 Dutch-language fact-checks retrieved from the Nieuwscheckers website and BENEDMO fact-check database, the research identified a stable set of narratives that recur across cases. These included portrayals of migrants as dirty and violent, often associated with spreading illness and criminal activities. Other claims framed refugees as a drain on the national economy, as economically opportunistic “fortune seekers” fleeing from actual safe countries. Further narratives identified migrants as a threat to Dutch and Western identity. Such depictions often converge in broader conspiratorial frameworks, such as the “Great Replacement” theory, namely the idea that a hidden elite is working to undermine Western civilisation and seeks to replace it with an “Islamic civilisation”. Finally, another trend in anti-migrant communication concerns the distortion of narratives around migration policies, where political actors advance measures framed as solutions, despite being ineffective or disconnected from the realities of migration governance.
Neurink’s research also delved into the origins and spread of disinformation in the area. Rather than remaining at the margins, it often originates in smaller, obscure media and is amplified by right-wing mainstream media or alternative media and eventually enters the mainstream political discourse. AI-manipulated content plays a key role in this process, as well as fabricated or distorted statistics.
José Moreno focused on the relationship between disinformation and political communication in Portugal, offering an outline of how the issue has evolved since 2019, particularly in the context of election monitoring.
Moreno offered a comparative overview of how disinformation trends have evolved, highlighting the increasing prominence of migration in Portuguese electoral campaigns in 2019, 2021, 2024, and 2025. His analysis showed that migration was not always central to disinformation in the country since earlier debates were dominated by themes such as corruption. However, as immigration increased in Portugal and political dynamics shifted, it became a key and recurrent topic, particularly from 2024 onwards. During the 2024 European Elections, for instance, across Europe, a range of disinformation narratives was identified. In the Portuguese context, however, these narratives tended to concentrate around two predominant themes: immigration and ethnic minorities. In particular, the Roma community, one of the most significant minority groups in Portugal, was disproportionately targeted by disinformation.
He illustrated how political actors, especially on the far right, have actively integrated disinformation narratives into their campaigns, using social media to amplify reach and engagement and eventually dominating the social media sphere in terms of followers and interactions. During the 2025 Parliamentary elections campaign, the far-right leader dominated the online space, accounting for around 86% of total engagement across candidates, demonstrating the growing impact of disinformation narratives on visibility and influence.
This trend continued in the 2026 Presidential election, where campaign messaging prominently targeted migrant and minority communities, including controversial billboards directed at the Bangladeshi and Roma populations. One of these was legally challenged and removed, highlighting tensions between political communication and legal standards. Main narratives about immigration during the 2026 elections consistently portrayed migrants as a source of insecurity and criminality, while also suggesting they receive unfair advantages from the state. These narratives were often linked to political accusations, such as the idea that migrants are brought in to influence elections, and to cultural fears that frame them as incompatible with national values or religious traditions. In more extreme forms, these claims evolve into conspiracy theories about population substitution. In terms of techniques, disinformation was largely driven by the cross-platform circulation of content, with Facebook representing a major channel for political disinformation, and spread across both mainstream and less regulated spaces. It often relied on the manipulation of content, such as videos or images taken out of context and repurposed to suggest misleading narratives. Fabricated or AI-generated content has been increasingly used to reinforce these claims.
Eóin Young gave an overview of ICPA’s work on the balance of fact and value-led approaches in strategic communications initiatives, which are relevant to counter disinformation and reframe the migration debate.
In his presentation, Young approached identity-based disinformation from a strategic communications perspective, focusing on how to counter it through more effective narrative engagement. He stressed that disinformation should be understood as the result of a large investment and sustained efforts to build and reinforce narratives over time. These narratives gradually shape the public opinion, becoming familiar “hooks” that people become attached to and rely on to interpret complex issues. Simple triggers can activate them through a process he describes as a form of “cultural acupuncture.”
A central element of his analysis is represented by frames, which are identity stories, a combination of problems, values and solutions. They act as “hooks and conduits” for misinformation and disinformation, shaping how people interpret reality. Because individuals are not “blank slates” but rely on familiar and reassuring patterns to make sense of the world, they tend to respond more strongly to these narrative structures than to facts. Individuals are more frame-driven than fact-driven.
To address this, Young emphasized the importance of public attitude segmentation, particularly the need to engage the “movable middle”. This group, which often constitutes a majority of the population, is not strongly aligned but tends to be less informed, less engaged, and more prone to influence. While difficult to reach, they are open to changing their opinions and are therefore a key target for communication strategies.
At the same time, he highlighted an important challenge. Public debate on migration is increasingly polarised, and there is a lack of interest and willingness among broader audiences to engage with fact-checked information. Moreover, narratives once associated with fringe or populist actors have now become mainstream, which allows such narratives to set the political agenda.
In view of the challenges mentioned, Young argued that facts and debunking remain essential but are not sufficient on their own. Fact-checking plays a crucial role in policy, media accountability, and countering disinformation, but fails to be emotionally effective. Moreover, focusing solely on correcting falsehoods risks reinforcing the opponent’s narrative by keeping the debate on their terms and risks, eventually resulting in a backfire.
Instead, Young advocated for a “both/and” approach, combining facts with values and storytelling. Strategic communication should focus not only on what is said, but also on how it is communicated. In particular, he stressed the importance of combining values with facts, starting the conversation with shared and relatable concerns and values, such as stability, fairness, or community, and then introducing evidence within a relatable narrative. The idea is to bring values to life through stories and then get to the issues.
This approach is illustrated through the #KommMit campaign, which aimed to reframe migration debates by highlighting everyday experiences and the contribution to society by migrants. By focusing on relatable characters such as a baker, a carpenter, and a butcher, and embedding their stories within broader values like solidarity, participation, responsibility, security and stability, the campaign aimed to create more resonant narratives. Values were then sequenced by issues and facts, namely the full stories of the protagonists and the related issues. These messages were systematically tested through focus groups, opinion polling, and behavioural tests, showing shifts in attitudes and predominantly positive responses.
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Meet your Trainers
Lisa Ginsborg is responsible for training and research at EDMO, as a Research Fellow at the EUI School of Transnational Governance. She also teaches International Human Rights at NYU Florence. She has previously worked in a number of research and teaching positions and for international human rights organizations. Her research interests in the field of international human rights law, include digital technologies and disinformation policy. She recently co-edited a book on “Disinformation: a Multistakeholder Analysis” (Springer 2026).
Katarína is a Research Lead of the Centre for Democracy & Resilience at the GLOBSEC Policy Institute, an international think tank based in Bratislava. Since 2016 she has led research on information operations and hybrid threats, and capacity-building projects focusing on societal resilience, vulnerabilities of public administration, and strategic communication. In her previous capacities, she worked for Transparency International Slovakia and the European Commission. Holds an MA in Political Science with Specialization in Research Methodology and Social Analysis from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and an MA in European Studies from Comenius University in Bratislava.
José Moreno is a researcher within MediaLab CIES Iscte, a research center at Iscte-IUL university, in Lisbon, Portugal, focusing on the societal impact of digital information and comunication technologies. Since 2019, his main focus has been the impact of disinformation on the political landscape, especially during electoral cycles.
I am a fact checker who works for Nieuwscheckers, the factchecking organization of Leiden University. In addition to factchecking, I have also done research into which disinformation narratives go around in the Netherlands and Flanders as part of a collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
Eóin Young is Co-founder and Director of the International Centre for Policy Advocacy (ICPA). With 25+ years’ experience, he supports partners across the EU and Eastern Europe/Central Asia to strengthen policy research, advocacy and strategic communications to promote open society values. He leads ICPA’s policy capacity development and narrative change work, and is co-author of key resources including “Making Research Evidence Matter” and the “Reframing Migration Narratives Toolkit”.
Target group: Stakeholders in the counter disinformation community, journalists and fact‑checkers; digital policy and civic tech practitioners; researchers; civil society organisations; media literacy educators and trainers.
What you will learn in this training session:
- Deepen understanding of the current disinformation narratives, techniques, tactics, actors and networks targeting minorities and migrants across Europe,
- Gain practical insights from practical lessons from developing value-driven campaigns and messaging that engage the “movable middle” and help shift narratives in polarised debates on migration
Deadline
11 May 2026, at 11:00 CEST
Applications are now closed