Keyword – brainwashing

Vicsek, Ferenc:

Mass media versus mass informedness

The Political Propaganda Indicator (PPI) measures abuses of information management, following the models of the Democracy Index created by Freedom House and of the Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by Transparency International. It is a method for measuring how corrupted the information disseminated to the public is. The PPI shows what percentage of people accept news items spread by political propaganda as true, even though they are otherwise often difficult to verify as factually correct. It shows what share of the public has a false perception of reality because of propaganda and manipulated news services. It also shows what percentage of people fall prey to false news streams and, consequently, how many of them decide in free elections on the basis of misleading, deliberately false information or concealed information as compared to a situation in which there is a level informational playing field.

Keywords: brainwashing, fake news, information policy, informedness, media regulation, media system, propaganda, press freedom, social media