CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND DISINFORMATION AS TOOLS FOR UNDERMINING NATIONAL SECURITY

Abstract

Fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories have been evaluated from attending closed-type gatherings, through social networks to occupying significant space in the media with national frequencies. Therefore, their transmitters have transformed themselves from obscure characters to political actors and decision-makers in state apparatuses. With a washed and adapted form, these covert ways of endangering national security attack democratic societies as well as states with fragile or democracy emerging like cancer in the human body. This paper aims to defend the hypothesis of the negative impact of disinformation and conspiracy theories on the national security of the Republic of Serbia by using examples from the last few years that have been exploited in public discourse and abused by the Russian Federation with the aim of reducing the support of Serbian citizens to membership in the European Union by placing erroneous and malicious claims related to members of the LGBT community through the prism of the alleged danger of violating the traditional form of the misuse of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines as a genetic weapon, as well as spreading misinformation that undermines the exploitation of lithium in the Republic of Serbia, which jeopardizes the economic progress of the state and therefore its national security.