Digital activism or information manipulation: The blurred line

What can shape public opinion, influence politics, intimidate even the largest corporations and spark real-world protests or even violence? Digital activism. Powered by new technologies, it has become one of the most powerful and accessible tools for change in the 21st century. But what if this activism is not genuine, not organic, not authentic, not grassroots?  It becomes something far more dangerous: a powerful force for pushing preferred narratives, gathering support, polarizing societies, and weakening the information environment. 

DIGITAL ACTIVISM OR PARTICIPATORY INFORMATION OPERATION?

The online environment is a fluid ecosystem in which humans, bots, AI-generated profiles, hybrid accounts, and undercover actors coexist, all contributing to shaping public discourse. All these actors can be involved in digital activism, broadly understood as the use of digital platforms to mobilise support, raise awareness or advocate for political or social change. Within this ecosystem, the boundary between genuine activism and information operations has become deeply blurred in the digital space. 

In an information operation, messages are disseminated through and with the help of online crowds. This makes orchestrated campaigns covert, because they integrate and instrumentalise users who are neither coordinated nor necessarily aware of their role in the operation. They become pieces on a much larger chessboard, playing a game they do not even know exists. People encounter a narrative, adopt it, and pass it on, turning an information operation into a hybrid of deliberate agents and unwitting participants, allowing it to spread as a self-sustaining force. Information manipulation is always a collaborative work in which ordinary users become involved simply by sharing and amplifying beliefs that resonate with us. 

WHEN “ACTIVISM” COMES FROM ABROAD

Foreign interference can take both covert or overt forms, from influence efforts that rely on soft power tools to clandestine operations designed to manipulate. In this regard, Russia is a well-known actor particularly for its long-standing concept of active measures, first carried out during the Cold War to exert an influence on the foreign policy of target countries in the interest of the Soviet Union. In the late 1970s, Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB, compared information campaigns to seeds that must be planted and watered by the state until they eventually blossom on their own. The goal was to create persuasive narratives that, once repeated often enough, would generate “a horde of involuntary but passionate defenders”. 

What appears as digital activism can in fact originate as a seed planted by a foreign actor, then integrated and amplified by domestic users who become convinced by the narrative. The foreign actor’s objective can be to polarize society, manipulate public debate and ultimately undermine the integrity of democratic institutions by weakening the information environment itself. 

A striking example emerged in 2013, in the midst of the Syrian civil war. An emergency volunteer group,officially known as the Syrian Civil Defence and  better known as the White Helmets, gained international recognition for rescuing civilians from bombings, evacuating the injured and providing essential services. At the same time, they became the target of what appeared to be an organic online activist movement against them. The group was accused of staging its rescue scenes, collaborating with extremist groups or even acting as a Western political tool. 

Who was at the origin of this disinformation campaign? It remains opaque, but what has been shown is that a mixture of foreign manipulation, Syrian government supporters and genuine online activists contributed to its spread. Bots, coordinated accounts and ordinary users all played a role, amplified by foreign media outlets such Russia’s RT and Sputnik, Iran’s Fars News, and Syria’s Syriannews. What looked like a spontaneous organic backlash was in reality an orchestrated operation that successfully mobilized real users whose views had been shaped by the campaign, turning them into active participants in generating and disseminating its preferred narratives. 

WHEN THE STATE PRETENDS TO PLAY ACTIVIST

Foreign interference is not the only threat to the authenticity of digital activism. Governments themselves increasingly rely on the language and aesthetics of grassroots movements to shape public opinion in their favor. By using bots, paid social-media commenters, networks of coordinated or automated accounts or even paying influencers and bloggers, they can make official narratives and public support appear as if they emerged organically from the population. Real activists can become caught up in these manipulations and join what they believe is a spontaneous and genuine movement. 

Since the early 2010s many examples have illustrated this phenomenon: Bahrain’s government in 2011 used trolls and government-funded public relations agencies to create online personas of false journalists; Malaysia ahead of its 2012 parliamentary elections saw the ruling coalition build a “cyber army” to spread falsehoods about the opposition; Brazil with staged “authentic expressions of support” for Bolsonaro circulated across multiple platforms; or even the Ethiopian government, the South Africa’s uMkhonto weSize party and the Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte which have all paid influencers to spread their narratives. 

WHEN POLITICAL ACTORS FROM DEMOCRATIC STATES JOIN THE GAME

Even political actors from democratic states can be at the origin of manipulated social movements. A recent example in the United States illustrates how something that looks like digital activism can be shaped by political interests. In 2025, an American Eagle advertising campaign featuring the actress Sydney Sweeney went viral under the slogan “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”. It quickly turned into a polarized online debate with some users accusing the campaign of conveying ideas of racial superiority by playing on the similarity between “jeans” and “genes”, while others framed the backlash as part of a broader war against “wokeness”. 

This debate has been strongly animated by conservative political figures and their supporters who amplified the controversy turning it into a symbol of resistance to progressive culture, even though the initial criticisms came from only a small number of accounts. In other words, political actors ignited a polemic that would likely have remained marginal, then mobilised real activists to transform it into a national media and political storm. Later, study found that a significant share of the engagement came from inauthentic and coordinated accounts, suggesting that the online activism was not purely organic but strategically amplified. 

IMPLICATIONS FOR CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

In this context, the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region stands at the intersection of a history shaped by the Soviet Union and its legacy of active measures along with new challenges, and more recent processes of democratisation often driven by traditions of digital activism. CEE has become a laboratory of influence operations, where foreign interference, domestic manipulation and genuine digital activism have coexisted for decades. 

Meta’s adversarial threat reports provide numerous examples of coordinated inauthentic behaviours originating and/or targeting the CEE region and necessitating disruption from their platforms. For instance, in 2025, the brand “Voice of Gagauzia” in Moldova was designed to appear as authentic while covertly advancing specific campaign messages through deceptive social media tactics using regional government resources.

Along these inauthentic digital activism initiatives lie crucial digital activism safeguarding democratisation in the region. For instance, the Rezist movement in Romania originated in 2017 on Facebook to fight political corruption. The same year, the #WolneSądy movement in Poland initiated by four lawyers aimed to mobilize against judicial reforms seen as undermining the rule of law. The Slovakian movement Za slušné Slovensko from 2018 relied first on Facebook after the murder of Ján Kuciak, a journalist and his fiancée, which even led to government resignations. These examples demonstrate how digital activism can amplify crisis-driven democratisation pressure. 

At the same time, protests in the region are frequently delegitimised through accusations of foreign manipulation such as in the case of the Slovak anti-corruption protests which were dismissed by some political actors as being orchestrated by foreign forces. This creates a paradox: real risks of information manipulation do exist, yet narratives about foreign interference are frequently instrumentalised to undermine domestic dissent. 

THE NECESSITY TO RETHINK DIGITAL ACTIVISM IN AN AGE OF ONLINE UNCERTAINTY

This uncertainty surrounding online digital activism should fundamentally redefine how we understand and respond to movements that emerge online. Given how powerful digital activism can be in shaping public opinion and disrupting economic and political systems, continuing to overlook the potential for information manipulation within these movements seems increasingly foolish. Recognising this risk necessarily calls into question the legitimacy and credibility of digital activism, especially as the same digital infrastructures are increasingly exploited by hostile, deceptive and opportunistic actors often hiding behind ordinary users' genuine commitment. 

Failing to acknowledge this risk early also delays the development of necessary structural responses (such as stronger platform accountability or an evolving legal framework) until a crisis emerges and proof of inauthenticity becomes undeniable. It is precisely in moments of crisis that responses tend to be disproportionate and potentially harming freedom of expression and the information environment as a whole.

At the same time, emphasizing the link between digital activism and information manipulation carries its own risks. It may further erode trust within societies and lead future digital movements to be treated with systematic skepticism. In response, digital activism may become increasingly professionalised in order to be taken seriously, which would be a shift that would undermine one of its core strengths: its accessibility. Digital activism has long been providing a low-cost medium for anyone to express ideas, particularly marginalized groups with limited resources and individuals who rely on anonymity in authoritarian contexts. Ultimately, the delegitimisation of digital activism may itself become a political weapon allowing actors to dismiss genuine popular demands by invoking alleged online interference.