Consumers often seeing disinformation in the EU 2022, by country

Encountering disinformation is, for some European citizens, a common occurrence. According to a 2022 survey across all 27 European member states, over 20 percent of those aged 15 years or older in Cyprus and Romania saw disinformation very often in seven days prior to the survey, and in Bulgaria the percentage who said the same was almost 30 percent. Meanwhile, respondents in Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands were the least likely to have seen disinformation very regularly in the last week.

Disinformation consumption by country

In France, 24 percent of people said they saw disinformation often, whereas in neighboring Germany the share was lower at just 17 percent. Responses from Scandinavia yielded similar results for each country with only a handful of consumers seeing false information often, whereas those in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Cyprus, and Greece reported higher exposure to disinformation.

Trust in media

With the ever-growing presence of fake news in our daily lives, we are starting to think more about the information we can trust. Levels of trust for different types of media are changing, with fewer people trusting the internet and online social networks, and more people trusting in the written press.