Resume
Manipulative Information Activities – Influencing Factors
Mgr. Lenka Jakubcová, Ph.D., Police Academy of the Czech Republic in Prague, Faculty of Security Management, Department of Crisis Management
Dr. Zdeněk Kovařík, CSc., Police Academy of the Czech Republic in Prague, an external researcher
Abstract
This article discusses the relationships between factors that influence the resilience of society and specific target groups in the face of disinformation and manipulative information activities. The data presented comes from original research conducted by a team from the Police Academy of the Czech Republic in Prague under the project “Resilience of Members of the Czech Police to Disinformation Influences and Possibilities of Strengthening Their Resistance Through Education” (VK01020187). Building on the results of this research, which will be published in other periodicals, the article provides a secondary, more in-depth analysis of the obtained data.
The article aims to analyse the relationship between conspiracy mentality, the media literacy index, and self-determined resistance to disinformation. These underlying socio-psychological dimensions are currently overlooked in approaches addressing disinformation. The authors seek to contribute scientific data to the discussion on factors influencing an individual’s subconscious decision-making regarding whether to accept information at face value or to critically evaluate it, as well as whether to invest time and effort in verifying its accuracy and credibility. Due to the scope and depth of this analysis, only selected relationships are presented here and contextualised within the framework of the research and its outcomes.
Keywords: Conspiracy mentality, media literacy index, self-determined disinformation resilience, mental resilience, exploratory factor analysis, MORGAN method, Somers’ Delta, Cliff’s Delta, CLES statistic, Kruskal-Wallis H Test.