In Switzerland, as in much of the world, the line between information and illusion has grown dangerously thin. A major new study by the Research Centre for the Public Sphere and Society (fög) at the University of Zurich has found that a remarkable 56.5% of the Swiss population now regard fake news as a major social problem—a figure that has climbed significantly over the past five years. That means more than half of the country has looked at their screens, seen a headline, a video, or a viral claim, and felt a creeping sense that they can no longer tell what is real. The study, published in the 2026 Quality of the Media Yearbook, also reveals that more than half of respondents regularly encounter misleading content, particularly on social media, video platforms, and through AI chatbots. It is one thing to worry about misinformation in the abstract; it is another to meet it every day in your feed, in a confidently false chatbot answer, or in a manipulated clip shared by a friend. The report captures a moment of deep public unease, where people are not simply concerned about politics or the economy, but about the very information environment that shapes how they understand the world.
The study’s most troubling finding, however, is not about the people who see fake news—it is about the people who have quietly stopped trying to understand the news at all. According to fög, 42% of those surveyed are “news-deprived,” meaning that they either do not keep up with current affairs at all or only absorb information in a fragmented, passive way through social media algorithms. They are not uninformed in the old sense of the word; they are misinformed in a new, subtle way, scrolling past headlines without context, catching a video clip without background, and never sitting down with a newspaper, a radio bulletin, or a long-form article. This group, the researchers warn, is particularly susceptible to conspiracy theories, which are increasingly perceived as a growing risk to Swiss society. The researchers’ conclusion is direct: consuming quality media is the most effective protection against disinformation, while social media platforms offer no protective effect whatsoever. In fact, people who get their information exclusively from TikTok or Instagram are just as vulnerable to conspiracy narratives as those who consume no news at all. That is a chilling comparison—it means that a steady drip of short, emotionally charged videos can be just as damaging as complete indifference. Information has become something to snack on rather than to digest, and the result is a public that is anxious, fragmented, and exposed to the very forces that thrive on confusion.
At the same time, the study paints a worrying picture of the health of the Swiss media itself. The quality of news coverage remained stable in 2025, according to the yearbook, but diversity declined sharply. Nearly one in three articles in the German-speaking Swiss press appeared in multiple publications, and in the specific field of national political reporting, the figure reached 44.7%. What this means is that when Swiss citizens read the news, they are increasingly reading the same few stories, produced by the same few sources, and redistributed across a shrinking number of outlets. A healthy public sphere depends on different voices, different angles, and different questions being asked—but when nearly half of political reporting is duplicated across papers, the range of perspectives narrows. This is not just a business problem for journalists; it is a civic problem for everyone. Democracy is built on shared, contested, and thoroughly examined information. If every outlet is telling the same story in the same way, then citizens are not really making choices—they are simply choosing which version of the same narrative they prefer. The decline in diversity makes the information ecosystem more fragile, more susceptible to groupthink, and easier to manipulate, because a single false story, once seeded, can spread across multiple platforms and publications without facing the challenge of independent verification.
Given this troubling backdrop, it is perhaps not surprising that the study found strong public support for public broadcasting. As Switzerland looks toward the 2029 licence renewal for the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), the parent company of Swissinfo, the researchers discovered that 57.7% of the public consider public broadcasting important or very important. This is not a lukewarm endorsement; it is a clear statement that many Swiss citizens see the SBC as a trusted anchor in a stormy media sea. At a moment when social media feeds are filled with confusion and private outlets are cutting corners to survive, people are turning to the public broadcaster for reliable reporting, thoughtful analysis, and a sense of shared national conversation. Yet the study also reveals an interesting tension: even as the public expresses strong support, the SBC itself is implementing cost-cutting measures, preparing reductions in its programming and services. Researchers note that citizens do not want a slimmed-down broadcaster. They expect the SBC to provide a comprehensive range of news, education, culture, sport, and entertainment—not just a stripped-down news service. In other words, the public values public broadcasting precisely because it is broad, because it plays a role in cultural life and national identity, not merely as a news agency. The challenge, then, is not whether the SBC will survive, but whether it will be able to fulfil the expansive role that people clearly expect, even as financial pressures mount and the corporation plans for austerity.
The economic realities behind this pressure are stark. The researchers found that tech platforms are siphoning off as much as CHF2.5 billion in Swiss advertising revenue every year, while revenue for domestic media has fallen to just CHF1.94 billion. These numbers tell a painful story: the money that once sustained journalism in Switzerland is now flowing to global digital giants that do not produce original reporting, do not employ local journalists, do not cover local council meetings, and do not hold local power to account. Newsrooms are being squeezed between falling income and rising costs, and that squeeze inevitably affects the quality, depth, and diversity of what they can produce. The researchers are therefore calling for counter-measures, including a proposal for media vouchers for young adults. The idea is simple but powerful: rather than letting a generation drift into social-media-only information diets, the state could give young people tangible support to subscribe to quality outlets, helping to build a habit of serious news consumption early in life. It is an acknowledgment that market forces alone will not protect what remains of Swiss media, and that public policy may be needed to defend the public sphere from the unintended consequences of platform dominance. The crisis is not abstract; it is visible in every reduced newsroom, every merged publication, and every local story that no longer gets told.
Ultimately, the fög study is not just a collection of statistics about fake news and media revenues. It is a portrait of a society trying to find its balance in a digital age that moves too quickly for the institutions designed to govern it. The findings remind us that misinformation thrives when people are disconnected, when they have lost trust in reliable sources, and when they are left alone with algorithmic feeds that reward outrage over accuracy. But the study also points toward a more hopeful path. Quality media is not a luxury; it is a public good, a shield against the chaos of disinformation. Public broadcasting is not obsolete; it is deeply valued, even in a fragmented media landscape. And the Swiss public is not complacent—a majority clearly recognizes fake news as a serious problem and is looking for solutions. The question is whether citizens, policymakers, and media institutions will respond with the urgency the moment demands. Media vouchers, public support, stronger media literacy, and a renewed commitment to independent journalism are all part of the answer. But beneath these policy tools lies a more fundamental choice: whether we want to live in a society where information is a shared resource, carefully maintained and accessible to all, or one where it is a chaotic, exploitable commodity. Every click, every subscription, every effort to understand the world beyond the screen is a small act of resistance. The future of Swiss democracy, the study suggests, will depend on the willingness of ordinary people to choose quality over convenience, and truth over noise.