The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unique societal stress as governments worldwide and their citizens have struggled to work together to contain the virus and mitigate its economic impact. This has been a trying time for democracies, testing the capacity of democratic governance to mobilise state and citizenry to work together. It has also tested the integrity of open information environments and the ability of these environments to deal with the overlapping challenges of disinformation, misinformation, election interference and cyber-enabled foreign interference.
This essay will analyse some of these emerging challenges while looking at both state and non-state actors manipulating the global information environment, with a particular focus on the Chinese state’s rapidly expanding interference and disinformation efforts. It also includes a series of recommendations for policymakers around the world.