The EU's Role in Fighting Disinformation: Crafting a Disinformation Framework (Part 2)

The second paper in Pamment's EEAS-commissioned trilogy focuses on the definitional challenge at the heart of EU counter-disinformation policy: establishing a shared terminology that distinguishes misinformation, disinformation, influence operations, and foreign interference with sufficient precision to support regulation and response. The paper argues that definitional clarity is not merely academic — it determines what interventions are proportionate, what is attributable to foreign actors, and what falls within legitimate political communication.

The terminology framework developed here — distinguishing between the intent of the actor, the nature of the content, and the mechanism of dissemination — influenced subsequent EU policy documents including the European Democracy Action Plan. For analysts and practitioners who need to understand why the EU uses the terms it does, and what analytical work those terms are doing, this paper provides the intellectual architecture.