Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 7/6/2024; Author: Elma Murić
Part of Ursula von der Leyen’s public address, where she likened educating the EU on harmful narratives and disinformation to vaccination—i.e., building immunity against such content—was misleadingly reported by several web portals as her announcing a “vaccination of the EU population against wrongthink.”
On May 28, 2024, the web portal Provjeri (.hr) published an article, whose title suggests that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, promised to “vaccinate the EU population against wrong thoughts”. The article states the following:
Speaking at the Democracy Summit in Copenhagen earlier this month, Ursula von der Leyen said:
“Research has shown that pre-bunking is more successful than de-bunking. Pre-bunking is the opposite of de-bunking. In short, prevention is better than cure. Think of information manipulation as a virus.
Instead of treating the infection when it has already taken off, which is de-bunking, it is better to get vaccinated and thus be prepared. Pre-bunking takes the same approach”.
If you read this text one more time, it may acquire the following meaning:
People in society who hold views that contradict the globalist narrative must be vaccinated against “wrong thoughts”!
So, things are completely clear – the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, believes that free thinking and freedom of speech threaten the 2030 Agenda and must be put in the dustbin of history.
The article also states that Von der Leyen, as part of her campaign for re-election to the position of President of the European Commission, has previously “promised that, if she is ‘elected’ again, she will defend Europe with the so-called “Shield of Democracy””.
The whole idea, she says, is “to expose disinformation and malign interference… to remove content, including false representations (of artificial intelligence), and make our societies more resilient.
“What kind of defence of democracy is it in which you are not allowed to think what you want?
And now the latest one, how “information is like a virus” and that the desired narratives should be injected like a vaccine directly into the minds of citizens, all to eliminate the risks of “confused opposing views or information”?
Articles featuring claims that Ursula von der Leyen promises to “vaccinate” the EU population against “wrong thinking” were also published by the following web portals Epoha, Nulta tacka and Sott, and the same claims can be found in a series of posts on social networks (1, 2, 3).
What did Ursula von der Leyen talk about in Copenhagen?
The web portals reported claims that the President of the European Commission, in her speech at the Democracy Summit in Copenhagen on May 14 this year, promised that “the EU population will be vaccinated against wrong thinking”, taken from an article published by the American web portal The People’s Voice on May 27 of this year. This web portal is previously known for spreading fake news and conspiracy theories (1, 2, 3).
In the article, The People’s Voice refers to a manipulative text published on May 26 by the English edition of the web portal Russia Today, featuring a headline which claims that “Von der Leyen proposes ‘vaccines’ for minds and ‘shields’ for democracy”. In the article, the author strongly criticizes Von der Leyen’s speech in Copenhagen, especially referring to the part of the speech in which the president of the European Commission described the worrying increase in harmful foreign influences and disinformation in the EU.
In the aforementioned speech, Ursula von der Leyen spoke about the manipulation of information and foreign influences, stressing “special concern with the increase in foreign interference and manipulation in our (regarding the EU) societies, democracies and elections”. On this occasion, Von der Leyen emphasized that, if she is re-elected president of the European Commission, she will launch a project called “European Democratic Shield”. She described the project as one of the key priorities of the next mandate, adding that it should represent “an ambitious European project focused on the greatest threats from foreign interference and manipulation”.
In her address, she presented the basic elements of the mentioned initiative – first of all, the observation of manipulations and foreign influences. A prerequisite for this, according to Von der Leyen, is free media. As another element, she mentioned “treatment”, i.e. acting in accordance with EU laws when such content is detected, adding that “progress has already been achieved through the DSA (Act on Digital Services of the EU) in this field.
In third place, said Von der Leyen, is resistance to such content.
Finally, resilience is required. With the development of technology, we need to build social immunity to information manipulation. Studies have shown that “prebunking” is more successful than “debunking”. “Prebunking” is the opposite of “debunking”. In short, prevention is better than cure. Think of information manipulation as a virus.
Instead of treating the infection after it has spread – which is “debunking” – it is better to get vaccinated so that our body is immunized. “Prebunking” is such an approach. Since disinformation depends on people passing it on to each other, people must know what the impact of harmful information is and what these techniques look like. As our knowledge increases, the chances of someone influencing us reduce. And that builds the social resilience we will need.
“Prebunking” and “debunking” – methods of establishing facts
Ursula Von der Leyen, in presenting one of the goals of the announced initiative – building resistance to disinformation – used the terms “infection”, “virus” and “vaccination” to point out to those gathered the importance of timely education and acquiring skills in recognizing fake news and propaganda before that they appear in public space.
This fact-finding method, which fact-checking platforms have been using more and more frequently in their reports and analyses, is known as “prebunking”. It is a newer concept in the fight against disinformation, which entails the creation and distribution of informative, factually accurate content about a phenomenon or event of public importance before potential disinformation eaches the public.
It is important to add that “prebunking” does not only include the presentation of facts but also involves educating the audience about manipulative tactics in the distribution of disinformation and those to whom it is distributed – the sources of disinformation. Basically, “prebunking” is aimed at strengthening the audience’s critical abilities in recognizing disinformation and propaganda content and narratives.
On the other hand, “debunking” represents the process of pointing out factually incorrect claims that have already appeared in the public space. This process includes checking the accuracy of what is claimed in a media article or post on social networks, that is, research of accurate information about a specific event or phenomenon in society.
It is important to emphasize that “prebunking” and “debunking” are complementary methods of establishing facts and that both significantly contribute to more efficient monitoring and documentation of disinformation content and harmful narratives that often accompany them. Numerous fact-checking platforms, including Raskrinkavanje, successfully apply both methods in their work.
Manipulative presentation of Von der Leyen’s speech
In her speech held at the Democracy Summit in Copenhagen, Ursula von der Leyen expressed her concern about the increase in foreign interference and disinformation in the European Union, and she referred to the importance of preserving personal and collective freedoms in the EU and added that the principles of EU democracy “today are under an impact like never before”.
On this occasion, as mentioned earlier, she presented the “European Democratic Shield” project, the focus of which is the fight against harmful narratives and disinformation. In June of this year, the media also reported on this project, reporting that it would be “responsible for detecting and removing online disinformation, based on the work of the EU’s digital regulations, the Act on Digital Services and ‘immunizing’ the bloc against harmful influences by enabling Europeans to recognize threats”.
Contrary to claims on web portals and social networks, the president of the European Commission did not say on that occasion that the “EU population” plans to “vaccinate against wrong thoughts”. In fact, she did not mention “wrong thoughts” in her address, while her comparison of one of the methods of establishing facts – “prebunking” – with vaccination was manipulatively presented in media reports as a threat to freedom of speech and “free thinking”.
Other fact-checking platforms also took part in verifying the claims that the president of the European Commission allegedly said at the Democracy Summit that Europeans would be “vaccinated against wrong thoughts”. Those claims were evaluated as misleading (1, 2).
On this occasion, Ursula von der Leyen’s speech was misused to promote the widespread conspiracy theory about the 2030 Agenda, according to which this United Nations plan aims to establish “control over the world’s population”, which, according to the supporters of this theory, also means “deprivation of human rights and freedom”.
Conspiracy theories about Agenda 2030, that is, the plan of the Sustainable Development Program until 2030, have been spreading in our area before (1, 2, 3). Such claims have no basis in facts, and the Program actually includes 17 sustainable development goals that span several different areas, such as the fight against hunger, poverty and violence, ensuring peace and prosperity in society, and gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Accordingly, we assess the claims that Ursula von der Leyen announced that she would “vaccinate the EU population against wrong thoughts” as a manipulation of facts and a conspiracy theory.
Claims that Von der Leyen “believes that free thought and freedom of speech threaten the 2030 Agenda” are rated as a conspiracy theory.
