Identifying and Understanding Anti-Immigration Disinformation : a case study of the 2018 Swedish national elections

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to understand to what extent and how anti-immigration disinformation was utilised in Swedish online news media before the 2018 Swedish national elections. Disinformation is intentionally misleading or false information that benefits the creator and aims to influence how people think, feel and act regarding a certain issue. The analytical framework used in this study was based on theory and previous research. Disinformation can adopt different strategies: constructive, disruptive or distractive. Research also suggests that disinformation can be categorized into different types: fabrication, manipulation, misappropriation, propaganda, satire and parody. This study analyzed 123 articles from different online news media from ten days before the election up until election day. Using qualitative content analysis this study showed that 20 percent of the articles contained anti-immigration disinformation. All of those articles were found in far-right online news media where almost 50 percent of the published articles during the examined time period contained disinformation. All different types were found, but misappropriation, fabrication and propaganda were most common. About half of the articles containing disinformation used a constructive strategy and about one third used a disruptive strategy. A bit more than one third of the articles had a combination of two or more types and strategies. The results indicate that disinformation can indeed constitute a problem, especially for those who seek information on far-right platforms. This study unveils a polarized debate on immigration with a lion's share of the disinformation coming from far-right online news media, while the mainstream media only publish very few critical articles on immigration. As research shows that a negative framing of immigration can affect attitudes, and by extension voting behaviour, further research to examine the effects of anti-immigration disinformation on voter behaviour and election results is needed. Especially in light of a diminished trust in democratic institutions, a growing demand for populism and increasing support for anti-immigration parties.