Abstract
International organizations such as the WHO have worked to raise awareness of the massive infodemic that accompanied the COVID‐19 outbreak and made it hard for people to find trustworthy sources of information and reliable guidance for their decisions. Our contribution focuses on the Italian case, where the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) was able to act as first mover in its field so as to strategically frame the problem of disinformation in the absence of a pre‐existing policy intervention. An emerging body of research shows that the activity of formally independent regulators is not necessarily limited to the implementation of delegated regulatory competencies. We discuss the implications of the activity of independent regulators for the fight against disinformation during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We find that as a political actor in its own right, the Italian media regulator claimed control over sectoral expertise in order to shape the crucial first steps of the response to the infodemic.
Highlights
Agenda-setting is about getting policymakers to pay serious consideration to an issue (Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014; Zahariadis 2016)
The first three issues highlighted that citizens were at risk of relying on unqualified sources: in March 2020, in the midst of the emergency, more than 30% of internet users consulted websites containing disinformation, often accessing them through redirection from social media; comparing the first five months of 2020 with the same period of the previous year, the total volume of disinformation on any topic increased by 19%; disinformation sources devoted significant space to COVID-19 related issues; articles on the epidemic disseminated by disinformation sources used a communication style based on terms leveraging negative emotions and anxiety (AGCOM 2020a: 46-48)
Our analysis focused on the role that regulatory agencies play in agenda-setting processes by raising attention to the deficiencies of self-regulation by online platforms
Summary
Agenda-setting is about getting policymakers to pay serious consideration to an issue (Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014; Zahariadis 2016). We analyze agenda-setting dynamics in the sector of media regulation and focus on the issue of online disinformation.
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