Youth And Eu. The Impact Of Covid-19 Infodemic On Citizens’ Involvement

The Covid-19 pandemic highlights the disinformation as a risk for European Union integration. False or deceptive news have always existed, but in recent years they tend to impact on public debate and democratic participation alarmingly for the connection with: the professionalization of communication strategies by political-institutional actors for consensus purposes and the characteristics of social media platforms and online and digital media consumption habits. So, The Covid-19 crisis and the linked infodemic are extraordinary cases to test the European Union capability to manage the disinformation disorder, especially towards young people. Indeed, some scholars highlight a generational cleavage. Starting from these considerations many questions arise: How the spread of disinformation is affecting young people? How the EU communication strategy in providing clear and useful information was perceived by students? How have these actions and preventive measures touched the levels of trust in EU institutions and the sense of belonging to Europe?The paper aims to analyse the impact of the communicative strategies and actions promoted by European institutions regarding disinformation about Covid-19 on trust and sense of belonging in young people of the South European Union. In particular, the impact on 1000 Italian and Spanish university students will be considered. The research presents an exploratory and quantitative study that uses a second-generation multivariate analysis method. The results show that trust can be very well the resource on which EU communicative actions may positively impact. Nevertheless, our study reveals that the measures adopted have not increased sense of belonging in EU integration.