Political radicalism and extremism no longer constitute marginal phenomena in European societies and politics. The consecutive financial crises, the Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, religious terrorism and geopolitical uncertainties create a multifaceted setting that exacerbates insecurity, anxiety and fears among European citizens.

There’s no clear dividing line between bad journalism and what is often called “fake news”. It’s futile to expect regulators or tech companies to be able to make editorial judgments. But what we can determine easily is the “realness” of a site. Does it have a real-world address, phone number, WhoIs, named contributors – in short, a colophon or impressum. Furthermore, does it adopt basic procedures indicating fairness – does it ever publish apologies, corrections etc? These tests are binary and easy to automate – and would make life much harder for the peddlers of disinformation.

Abstract: Authoritarian values have long been thought to be an important determinant of public opinion and political behaviour including the support of populist political parties. Explanations for why some individuals have more authoritarian values than others have focused on various processes of socialization and economic conflict. Evidence that economic change fosters authoritarian values has primarily been based on aggregate correlations across countries or across time within countries or individual-level correlations between economic characteristics and authoritarian values.