Social media are not only a space for making contacts and strengthening social ties, but also an increasingly important source of information. This fact is very crucial in the context of political communication. On the one hand, social networks have created a new platform of interaction between politicians and citizens,in particular during the electoral campaign, but on the other, due to its structure based on the rapid and direct flow of information, they proved to be an effective tool for spreading false content, so-called fake news and misinformation.
This negative trend, most visible during the presidential elections in the United States in 2016, has become an impulse to undertake extensive measures to combat this practice. Among many entities engaging in campaigns against fake news, there were primarily enterprises from the ICT industry, but also governments, media publishers and international organizations.
The main aim of the article is to indicate the most important actions taken (by the end of January 2018) in order to fight disinformation on the Internet. The text will also focus on the analysis of this activity in the context of potential danger of increasing control over the flow of information on the Internet and introduction of censorship on a mass scale.

This article describes the issue of misinformation during the SARS CoV-2 pandemic, which WHO called ‘infodemic’. The outbreak of the pandemic has changed the constellation of the information environment, where there is a noticeable increase in fake news, conspiracy theories and the hate speech they generate. The modified architecture of digital space causes the formation of new instruments, influence factors, phenomena – previously recognized, but never before so intense. The article focuses on fake news that appeared in connection with the ongoing pandemic and which is present in Polish public discourse. The adopted perspective allowed to look at the phenomenon of false information through the prism of the theory of information laundering.

As both the European Union and its member states acknowledge that the proliferation of fake news threatens their political stability and – consequently – the general idea of European integration – they have undertaken many steps to confront that problem. Them, the article examines how EU institutions, together with the member states, have tackled the spread of disinformation within the common policy of cybersecurity. The novelty of this study is that it does so concerning the ongoing process of Europeanization of cyberspace, combining the field of information technology with European studies.

Fake news był obecny w życiu człowieka już od czasów starożytnych. Jednakże rozwój technologii, globalizacja doprowadził do zwiększenia zasięgu jego rozprzestrzeniania. Masowość mediów doprowadziła do przeinaczeń, nadinterpretacji, szerzenia nieprawidłowości na określony temat. W ten sposób zaczęła się szerzyć dezinformacja przeprowadzana różnymi metodami. Określana jest ogólnie jako fake news. Celem artykułu jest ukazanie jak ważną rolę w współczesnym świecie pełni fake news oraz jak jest wykorzystywany w celach manipulacji. Przeinaczona informacja może wywołać niepokój w jednostce bądź grupie, a tym samym zdestabilizować bezpieczeństwo. Masowy dostęp do mediów społecznościowych i Internetu prowadzi do zwiększonej ilości różnych, błędnych, celowo zmanipulowanych informacji, co może wpływać negatywnie na nasze postrzeganie rzeczywistości, a w konsekwencji na nasze bezpieczeństwo.