Here is a humanized summary of the IBERIFIER report, expanded into six reflective paragraphs.
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Disinformation is often described as a flood of falsehoods, but the work of IBERIFIER—one of the fifteen independent hubs that make up the European Digital Media Observatory—reveals something far more human and unsettling. Across nine quarterly briefs examining the spread of false narratives in Spain and Portugal, a clear image emerges: disinformation does not float randomly through the internet; it attaches itself to the moments that matter most to people. It clings to emergencies, political turbulence, and international crises, disguising itself as urgency, fear, or righteous anger. The value of these briefs is not simply that they catalog individual hoaxes, debunked videos, or manipulated quotes. Their deeper importance lies in the connections between cases. A rumor about migrants during one crisis is reused during another. A cynical claim about institutional corruption surfaces again in a different election. A health scare becomes a political weapon, and a political scandal becomes a health myth. This is not a collection of isolated mistakes; it is a living ecosystem of suspicion, repetition, and adaptation. And it thrives because it speaks to our emotions before it speaks to our reason.
The first and perhaps most powerful pattern identified in the briefs is the way disinformation attaches itself to emergencies. Whether it is a wildfire tearing through a rural region, a flood sweeping through a valley, a devastating storm, or a sudden public health scare, moments of acute danger are exactly when false content multiplies. This is deeply human: when people are afraid, they share information not to be perfect journalists but to help their neighbors, to warn their families, to feel as though they are doing something in the face of helplessness. The report shows how fabricated warnings, invented rescue numbers, fake official announcements, and distorted videos circulate with astonishing speed during these crises. Sometimes the falsehoods are designed to cause panic; sometimes they simply exploit the chaos. But regardless of intent, the effect is the same: trust in official communication erodes at the exact moment it is most needed. People begin to wonder whether the fire service is telling the truth, whether the hospital numbers are real, whether the government is hiding the scale of the disaster. The briefs reveal a heartbreaking irony: the impulse that makes us human—to share out of care for others—is the same impulse that makes us vulnerable. In the fog of an emergency, a lie can feel like a lifeline, and by the time the truth arrives, it often sounds cold, bureaucratic, or already suspect.
The second major thread is political, and it runs through nearly every quarterly briefing. Elections, coalition negotiations, parliamentary votes, and ordinary political arguments become theaters where pre-existing narratives are constantly rehearsed. The report highlights how accusations of institutional misconduct are among the most durable and successful forms of disinformation in the Iberian context. These accusations rarely need to be true to feel plausible, because they play on a widespread, cultural suspicion of power. A claim that a politician has secretly profited from a disaster, that a judge has been pressured to drop a case, that an election result has been manipulated behind closed doors—these stories do not have to survive verification; they only have to survive emotionally. They are shared in family group chats, repeated in comment sections, echoed by influencers, and then picked up by mainstream media as questions to be debated. The human cost is enormous. Each cycle of fabricated scandal leaves ordinary citizens a little more exhausted, a little more cynical, a little more convinced that no matter who wins, the system is broken. The report’s authors do not moralize about this, but the evidence points to a simple truth: disinformation is not only a danger to democracy because it changes votes, but because it changes how people feel about democracy itself. When a falsehood about institutional misconduct is allowed to stand beside the truth as “another opinion,” the very idea of institutional integrity begins to look like a naive fantasy.
International events form the third pillar of this falsehood ecosystem. Spain and Portugal are not isolated islands, and neither are their media landscapes. The briefs show how conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and global crises overseas are constantly translated into local disinformation. Wars and border crises, in particular, generate powerful imagery that travels instantly across social networks: a dramatic photograph, a tearful face, a burning building. Often, that imagery is real—but from a different conflict, a different year, or a different context. The report tracks how old videos are recycled to claim new massacres, how innocent people become viral embodiments of political arguments, and how foreign state actors and local opportunists alike take advantage of emotional distance to push narratives that have nothing to do with the suffering they exploit. For ordinary people, this creates a confusing moral landscape. They are asked to care about events thousands of kilometers away, but they are given false maps, manipulated coordinates, and fabricated villains. The consequences are not limited to the internet. International disinformation fuels hatred against immigrants at home, spreads fear about energy shortages, distorts debates about military aid, and deepens divisions between citizens who should be able to discuss policy calmly. The briefs remind us that the global and the local are not separate: a lie about an international crisis can be a way of casting suspicion on a neighbor, a refugee, or an entire religion. Human beings are wired to respond to stories; disinformation exploiters know this and engineer stories with political ends, using the reality of suffering as their raw material.
Public health and migration are the two feared subjects that give these narratives their strongest emotional pull. The IBERIFIER briefs repeatedly observe that familiar claims about these topics resurface with each new event. Migration is framed as an invasion, a threat to housing, hospitals, and cultural identity. Health crises are framed as plots, experiments, or forms of control. What is striking about these recurring themes is their adaptability. During a vaccine rollout, the same falsehoods that once surrounded an infectious disease are repackaged to attack the vaccine itself. During an economic downturn, the same fabricated stories of migrants receiving preferential treatment are dusted off and aimed at new audiences. The human consequence is a slow poisoning of community trust. Parents hesitate to vaccinate their children because they have heard a convincing, frightening story online. Neighbors begin to view migrants as parasites rather than people because a viral post has turned a rare, isolated incident into a supposed nationwide pattern. Health workers and community leaders struggle to correct every lie, but corrections always travel slower than suspicions. The report’s connection between cases reveals why these themes are so powerful: they combine personal fear with social resentment. A person does not need to understand foreign policy to worry about their child’s health; they do not need expertise in economics to resent a newcomer who appears to receive something “for free.” Disinformation does not have to convince people of a grand ideology; it only has to activate these small, private anxieties.
What makes the IBERIFIER report more than just a collection of debunks is its insistence on seeing the connections. A false claim about migration during an emergency strengthens the narrative that institutions are failing. A fabricated story of political corruption makes the next health scare seem more plausible. An international conspiracy theory from another country is localized and adapted to Spanish or Portuguese politics. Each individual piece of disinformation is like a brick; the briefs show the building they create together. Understanding this architecture is essential because responses that tackle only single falsehoods will never be enough. The report ultimately argues, in its quiet, evidence-based way, for a more human response: media literacy that starts with empathy, journalism that listens as well as verifies, and a public sphere in which facts are not dismissed as weapons. It asks each of us to pause, to notice the emotional pull of a headline, to ask why a story feels true even when it is not. For in the end, disinformation wins not by outsmarting us, but by making us afraid, tired, and alone. The hope hidden in these nine briefs is that recognizing the patterns can interrupt them—that by seeing how fear is engineered, we can begin to choose clarity over comfort, and connection over suspicion. The problem is real, but so is our capacity to resist it, together.