Eighty-five percent of adults in Poland said false information online is a major threat, placing Poland among the most alarmed of 25 countries surveyed in spring.
Across all countries, the median share calling disinformation a major threat was 72 percent.
Poland is one of seven countries where more people identify disinformation as the top threat than any other issue asked about, alongside Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Korea.
In Poland, 60 percent cited the spread of infectious diseases as a major threat and 59 percent pointed to terrorism.
"The threat is real, in part because it has become easy to generate synthetic content with artificial intelligence," said Dariusz Jemielniak, vice president of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and a professor at Kozmiński University in Warsaw.
He added in comments to Polish state news agency PAP that his team sees the volume of disinformation rising while efforts to counter it are thinning out.
Concern in Poland has risen sharply since the start of Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine in 2022.
Pew notes a 20-point jump in the share of Polish adults who now see false information as a major threat.
The organization cautions that survey methods changed from in-person to telephone interviews, which may affect comparisons, but the increase is still large.
The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Report similarly ranks misinformation and disinformation as the top short-term global risk for the second year in a row, reflecting worries about AI-driven content shaping politics and public debate.
Pew’s data show age and politics shape perceptions. In Poland, adults aged 50 and over are more likely than those 18–34 to call false information a major threat.
In several European countries, including Poland, supporters of right-wing populist parties are less concerned about disinformation than non-supporters.
Jemielniak said lower trust in mainstream institutions among anti-elitist groups can lead some to see disinformation as a label used to delegitimize messages they find persuasive.
Looking ahead, Jemielniak expects both more disinformation and more active countermeasures. He warned that cheaper tools for generating synthetic video and audio will make manipulation easier, especially during crises or heated political moments when public attention is high.
Officials and civic activists in Warsaw have warned of the political impact.
Lawyer Dorota Głowacka warned earlier this year that social media companies have the capacity to shape worldviews and manipulate voters, especially younger users, the PAP news agency reported.
Deputy Digital Affairs Minister Paweł Olszewski has said Poland cannot eliminate disinformation but aims to limit its harms, adding that Russia and Belarus seed false narratives that reach large audiences.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP