This report focuses upon understanding and evaluating the evidence for foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) countermeasures and the multiple frameworks designed to deliver most effective responses to FIMI related harms, across an array of policy domains and contexts. The definition of the term FIMI employed in this report is as a mostly non-illegal pattern of behaviour that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures and political processes, conducted in an intentional and coordinated manner by state or non-state actors (EEAS, 2023). The related term disinformation covers a specific variant of FIMI, engaging information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, a social group, organization or country (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017).
The discussion in this report is organised around three specific research objectives:
- To develop an understanding of the evidential supports for different control measures directed towards managing and mitigating the impacts and effects of specific FIMI actions and campaigns, and any associated gaps in knowledge.
- To evaluate the availability, use and efficacy of the multiple FIMI countermeasures frameworks that have been introduced by a range of different authors and organisations, in support of FIMI harm management and mitigation outcomes.
- To lay the groundwork for a development agenda for FIMI countermeasures, taking into account emerging risks and threats, that alter the speed, scope, scale and sophistication of the capacities and capabilities available to adversarial state actors and their proxies, as they seek to influence public understanding and political decision-making, aligned with their geopolitical aims.
Framed by overlapping and interacting challenges and considerations, this report seeks to develop a more system-level view of the current state-of-the-art of FIMI defences and countermeasures and the evidential supports for these.
