Austria is losing the battle against disinformation, according to Justice Minister Alma Zadic.
With misleading and hateful content surging online, Zadic believes public institutions simply don¡¯t have the resources to match the output of bad actors. ¡°We cannot compete, in particular when it comes to disinformation or conspiracy theories,¡± the 39-year-old Green Party minister said in an interview last month in Vienna.
While mis- and disinformation are testing democratic institutions around the world, in Austria these issues are now playing out around a former chancellor who will stand trial later this month on charges of corruption related to delivering false testimony to parliament. Sebastian Kurz, a member of the conservative People¡¯s Party who served as chancellor between 2017 and 2021, has separately been accused of fueling disinformation by using public money to plant fabricated opinion polls in Austria¡¯s tabloid media before he took office.
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