Number of Czechs who think their country is target of Russian information war falling

The number of people in the Czech Republic who believe that their country is the target of an information war waged by Russia against the West fell from May’s 51 percent to 46 percent in June, according to a newly released survey conducted by the Ipsos agency in cooperation with the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO). Most of those who do believe that the Czech Republic is a target of a Russian information war are men, young people and those with a university education.

Meanwhile, the number of people who do not have a clear opinion on the matter is growing, currently there are 27 percent as opposed to last month’s 18 percent.

What has also fallen is the positive attitude to blocking eight websites that were marked as disinformation news sites by the association CZ.NIC. In June, 34 percent of respondents said that blocking the websites was justified. Seven of the eight news sites have since been unblocked.

According to the results of the survey, the majority of Czechs believe that the most common cause of fake news and disinformation is the way in which people consume the news (40 percent). 37 percent of respondents said that an important role is also played by social media algorithms. Government policy is seen as responsible for fake news by 26 percent of the population, the results of the survey indicate.

The survey was conducted from May 31 to June 5 on a representative sample of the Czech population on the internet.