In this collaborative project, we are investigating how disinformation impacts and is received by migrants in the multilingual information spaces during their social orientation phase. How multilingualism can become a gateway for targeted misinformation has received little attention to date, and this is precisely where our research project comes in.

The focus is on three research questions:

1. How are migrants confronted with disinformation, how do they deal with it, and how does this affect their trust in the state and democracy?

2. What disinformation strategies are migrants exposed to?

3. Which actors place and spread disinformation targeting migrants, and what manipulation techniques do they use?

 

To answer these questions, we will first use surveys and interviews to gain a better understanding of the target group's information-seeking behavior and to examine the relationship between multilingualism and trust in the state. Following this, we will map the disinformation strategies to which migrants are exposed. Based on the empirical findings of our research, we will develop an evidence-based teaching and learning concept to strengthen resilience against disinformation. This concept will be designed in terms of content and didactics to ensure that the target group accepts it, can use it easily, and that it remains permanently available and usable.