# Summary: International Relations in the Age of Global Disinformation

**Source:** Global Challenges, Issue 13  
**URL:** https://globalchallenges.ch/issue/13/international-relations-in-the-age-of-global-disinformation/

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## Overview

The article traces the evolution of the global informational order across three eras — 19th-century coffee-house democracy, 20th-century imperial propaganda, and the 21st-century digital/disinformation age — arguing that today's post-truth environment represents a fundamental rupture in how public opinion is formed and manipulated.

## Key Arguments

### 1. Democracy as Public Reasoning vs. Voting
Drawing on Habermas, the author contends that healthy democracy requires not just free elections but an informational infrastructure for open public reasoning. The decline of professional journalism and the fragmentation of the public sphere into algorithm-curated bubbles threaten this foundation.

### 2. Historical Evolution
- **19th century:** The bourgeois public sphere (coffee houses, newspapers) was built on exclusions — of women and colonial subjects.
- **20th century:** Propaganda evolved through cinema, radio, and "psychological action" campaigns during decolonisation. Emotions became legitimate tools of informational warfare (e.g., napalm photographs, Abu Ghraib images).
- **21st century:** Digitalisation has fragmented the public sphere into algorithm-driven communication bubbles, fuelled by "surveillance capitalism" and the economics of clicks over journalistic rigour.

### 3. The Post-Truth Age
The article introduces Harry Frankfurt's concept of **"bullshit"** — discourse that is indifferent to truth rather than deliberately deceptive. Unlike Cold War propagandists who knew the difference between truth and lies, today's super-spreaders may not even know they are spreading falsehoods. The result is an "epistemic nihilism" where distinguishing truth from falsehood is no longer seen as possible or relevant.

### 4. State-Sponsored Disinformation
- **Russia** is the archetypal actor (2016 US election interference, Brexit, Catalonian separatism, Libya campaigns).
- Other active states: Iran, Saudi Arabia (10,000+ fake Twitter accounts targeting Qatar), North Korea, China.
- China has historically focused on domestic propaganda and soft power but may be shifting toward Russian-style tactics.
- Authoritarian regimes exploit the ambient nihilism to undermine human rights scrutiny and project power.

### 5. Accountability and Solutions
- Investigative journalism ("slow research") is more essential than ever.
- Social media platforms must be held accountable for business models that monetise personal data and enable disinformation.
- When democracies exercise political will (e.g., Zuckerberg's Congressional hearing post-Cambridge Analytica), they can tame tech platforms.
- The UN Special Rapporteur has declared the information environment "a dangerous, expanding theatre of conflict."

## Conclusion

Information warfare is a global issue eroding the liberal consensus on which international cooperation rests. The Ukraine war exemplifies the stakes. Rebuilding trust in the information order is "a political battle worth fighting for" — not a foregone conclusion.

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*Summary generated 2026-05-09*