Public Dissemination of Knowingly False Information: Criminal

and Criminological Aspects

Victoria Romanovna Nabiullina

Northern Trans-Ural State Agricultural University, Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russia

Keywords: Criminal law, criminal means, crime prevention, dissemination, knowingly false information, survey,

coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19.

Abstract: Research in Russian criminal law and criminology focused on the public dissemination of knowingly false

information has been going on for several decades. However, given the rapidly changing scale of such acts

during the coronavirus pandemic (some sources say about the spread of fake information, misinformation),

this problem should receive more attention. The relevance of the chosen topic is also influenced by the

addition of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (hereinafter the Criminal Code of the Russian

Federation) with Article 207.1 “Public dissemination of knowingly false information about circumstances that

pose a threat to the life and safety of citizens” and Article 207.2 "Public dissemination of knowingly false

socially significant information that entailed grave consequences". In the presented article, based on the results

of the analysis of a survey posted on the Internet, the author examines the awareness of university students

about the existence of criminal liability for the public dissemination of knowingly false information, including

about the coronavirus. The purpose of the research is to identify possible causes and conditions for the public

dissemination of knowingly false information. The following can be distinguished as the research tasks:

respondents familiarization with crimes under Art. 207.1, 207.2 and Part 4 Art. 128.1 of the Criminal Code

of the Russian Federation; identification of the number of students who disseminated false information,

including through its repost; analysis of the reasons and conditions for the false information dissemination. In

conclusion, the author proposes the use of a survey of university students as a method helping to prevent the

commission of crimes related to the dissemination of knowingly false information, as well as an object of

scientific research. The article highlights a variety of reasons and conditions for the dissemination of

knowingly false information: from the desire to increase their authority in the microsocial group to selfish

motives.

1 INTRODUCTION

The surge in the fake information dissemination in the

world on the ground of the coronavirus pandemic has

made it necessary to criminalize acts of publicly

disseminating knowingly false information, including

about the coronavirus (Articles 207.1 and 207.2 of the

Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and the

updating of research in criminal law on the issue of

countering the commission of these acts by criminal

means. Due to the fact that these articles came into

force recently, from April 1, 2020, the new corpus

delicti are a poorly studied institution of criminal law.

The novelty is the analysis of the possible reasons and

conditions for the commission of criminal offenses

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1491-6127

for the public dissemination of knowingly false

information based on a survey among students of a

higher educational institution. It is assumed that

conducting a survey, the purpose of which is to

identify the reasons and conditions for the public

dissemination of knowingly false information, will

justify that criminal acts are committed, inter alia, due

to ignorance of laws and personal characteristics. The

tasks of the work are: analysis of the survey; research

of foreign sources on similar topics. The results of the

survey can be used to improve the mechanisms for

countering the commission of crimes.

Nabiullina, V.

Public Dissemination of Knowingly False Information: Criminal and Criminological Aspects.

DOI: 10.5220/0010629000003152

In Proceedings of the VII International Scientiﬁc-Practical Conference “Criminal Law and Operative Search Activities: Problems of Legislation, Science and Practice” (CLOSA 2021), pages

70-74

ISBN: 978-989-758-532-6; ISSN: 2184-9854

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

A sociological research was conducted among

extramural students of non-legal specialties at the

Northern Trans-Ural State Agricultural University

Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of

Higher Education in the period from January to

March 2021. In the distance classes in the

“Jurisprudence” discipline, about 200 students were

asked to take an anonymous survey posted by the

research author on the Internet, after reading the

questionnaire, only 77 students saved their answers,

the analysis of which was made in this work. The

survey can be viewed at (Nabiullina Victoria, 2021).

79.2% of respondents with secondary vocational

education, 15.6% with higher education, 5.2% with a

secondary general education took part in the survey

conducted among students of a higher educational

institution. The age of the respondents varies from 20

to 45 years. 70.1% (54 people) of male students,

29.9% (23 people) female students took part in the

survey. Also, a content analysis of the foreign

authors’ works was performed.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The primary task to identify the reasons and

conditions for the dissemination of knowingly false

information is to analyze the data on whether people

lie themselves. Therefore, students were asked a

question of the following content: “A lie is a

deliberate perversion of the truth, expressed to

mislead someone. Forms of lies: silence and

distortion. Think, how often do you lie? Only 7.8% of

77 respondents answered “daily” to this question. The

question implies lying not only to others, but also to

yourself. If you think about how often a person is

silent or distorts the answers to questions, including

his own, then there is a chance that he will come to

the answer that he is lying every day. An elementary

question, familiar to everyone: “How are you?”,

undoubtedly entails something like this: “I’m fine”.

Whether such an answer corresponds to the true state

of affairs, it seems that not always. It is assumed that

the more people realize, recognize, distinguish the

falsity of the information, check it for reliability, and

as a result, know and understand the consequences of

its dissemination, the number of criminal offenses

will decrease. But one research notes that it is difficult

for a person to distinguish truth from lies, being

overwhelmed with misleading information that he

receives over and over again (de Oliveira et al., 2021).

Perhaps that is why the whole world during the

coronavirus pandemic was overwhelmed by

infodemic, when many sent each other information

about the coronavirus and how to cure it without

checking it for reliability. The rest of the answers to

the above question were distributed as follows:

several times a week - 19.5%, several times a month

- 33.8%, you are an honest person - 32.5%. One

person out of 77 respondents answered the question

as follows: it happens sometimes; according to

circumstances; only for the occasion; there are

situations when it is necessary to help others; a lie for

good is not a lie; rarely. Unfortunately, lying "out of

necessity" to help others, or white lie for someone but

at the expense of other, can be criminally punishable,

for example, in cases of concealment from crimes,

complicity. The detection of a person's false

intentions is possible with the help of unexpected

questions, such an experiment is described in the

literature (Bogaard et al., 2019).

The question “Do you check information about

events in the country, in your city for its reliability,

received from friends, from the media?” was asked

and out of 77 respondents 27.3% answered that they

always check, 62.3% - sometimes check, 10.4% -

never check. The results of the survey and

communication with students indicate that they have

no time, need, interest in checking information for its

reliability, or the inability to navigate a large flow of

information in order to search for truthful

information. An excess of data and knowledge is one

of the characteristics of the information society

(Pulido et al., 2020). In such a situation, the posting

of a refutation of knowingly false information on a

single website of law enforcement bodies on the

Internet can be a criminal mean of countering the

spread of knowingly false information. It should be

noted that 47 of 77 respondents answered that they

almost always receive information from the Internet.

Therefore, the proposal to refute false information on

the Internet is appropriate and reasonable.

In Spain, research was performed to identify the

main channels of communication used by the

population to inform about the pandemic (Fernández-

Torres et al., 2021). The main conclusions of this

research are that in Spain, citizens are interested in

information related to the coronavirus, but the media

are not trusted and reliable; social media and instant

messaging are considered to be the channels with the

most false news. Another research focusing on the

differences between misinformation and

disinformation noted the following (Raspopova &

Bogdan, 2019). The fakes in journalistic articles are

appeared due to violation of the basic principles of

Public Dissemination of Knowingly False Information: Criminal and Criminological Aspects

journalism: truthfulness and objectivity, enshrined in

international documents on professional ethics, which

represent the basic requirements for the journalist

work with information; the disinformation is emerged

due to the disregard of the basic principle of

journalism: to describe life, not a fictional reality. The

abovementioned leads to the conclusion that in such

circumstances of the society development, a person

needs excellent cognitive abilities.

In Russia, criminal liability for the public

dissemination of knowingly false information,

including about the coronavirus, was established from

April 1, 2020. For the period of the survey from

January to March 2021, out of 77 respondents, 33.8%

did not know about the introduction of this criminal

liability, the remaining 66.2% were informed. One

third of the respondents who are not aware of the

adoption of important changes in the Criminal Code

of the Russian Federation is a negative indicator of

the awareness, legal consciousness of the population

in the context of the digital development of society.

There is no doubt that responsibility for the legal

awareness of the population rests not only with the

state, but also with citizens, therefore, bilateral

cooperation to improve the legal culture of a person

is important. Criminal law ignorance can be one of

the conditions for committing crimes.

Despite the high percentage of respondents who

do not know about the introduction of criminal

liability for the public dissemination of knowingly

false information, only 13% of 77 people

disseminated it about the coronavirus without being

convinced of its reliability. For example, they sent

information to their friends on social networks, by

phone, and discussed it in conversation. Obviously,

the remaining 87% of the respondents did not spread

knowingly false information, proceeding from an

understanding of the essence of information or an

“intuitive” feeling of its falsity. The honesty in the

answer to this question of 10 people (13%) out of 77

respondents demonstrates the presence of a potential

probability of bringing them to justice under Art.

207.1, 207.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian

Federation. The complexity of such crimes

qualification lies in the presence of a sign of false

information “actual knowledge”. In the absence of

preliminary verification of the information accuracy

by the person, is it possible to raise the question of

"knowingly false information” dissemination by him

Unlikely. It should be noted that there are individual

differences in susceptibility to false memories of fake

news about COVID-19, about which there is separate

research, the authors of which concluded that who are

more aware of COVID-19 or who received higher

results on the analytical thinking test ( critical

thinking) are less likely to report false memories after

being exposed to fake stories (Greene & Murphy,

2020). Disinformation depends on a person's ability

and motivation to detect lies, as well as on other

factors at the group and society level that increase

citizens' chances of receiving truthful information

(Scheufele & Krause, 2019).

Repost of any information received on social

networks, in instant messengers, including from

friends, without checking it for reliability is often

done - by 2.6% of respondents, sometimes - by 39%,

never - by 58.4%. The reasons for the desire to share

the news may be different, selfish goals, political

interests, "the need for chaos", etc. For example, in

the period from March 14 to March 29, 2019, a survey

experiment was conducted in Germany to establish

how sources influence people, whether they believe

what they read and whether they share this

information (Bauer & von Hohenberg, 2020). It

turned out that subjects have a higher tendency to

believe and share news from real sources; people are

more likely to believe a news report from a source

from which they previously received congruent

information. The research references to a famous

discovery in psychology and political science that

people evaluate information according to their pre-

existing views, values or beliefs. Age, education,

income, and other variables correlate with the ability

to distinguish between professional and non-

professional websites. In another research, the

authors concluded that people's altruism was the most

important factor that contributed to the spread of false

information about COVID-19 (Apuke & Omar,

2021). Existing research supporting the spread of

false news on social media has identified reasons such

as high trust in online sources, social media fatigue,

fear of missing out, and information overload (Apuke

& Omar, 2020).

The question “Do you think it is necessary to

prosecute those who disseminated knowingly false

information that became known to them from other

persons?” was asked, and 46.8% of students answered

positively, 53.2% - negatively. Taking into account

that the percentage of respondents (39%) only

occasionally check information for reliability before

sending it to others, the result of the survey - 53.2%

may indicate the respondents' understanding of the

punishability of the act and unwillingness to endure

it, or disagreement with criminal liability in relation

to those who are not the primary source of knowingly

false information, i.e. was not the initiator of its

creation and the first distributor.

CLOSA 2021 - VII INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC-PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “CRIMINAL LAW AND OPERATIVE SEARCH

ACTIVITIES: PROBLEMS OF LEGISLATION, SCIENCE AND PRACTICE”

Legal measures due to misinformation about

COVID-19 ("infodemia") have been introduced not

only in Russia, but also in other countries, about

which there is separate research. The author of this

research points out that taken legal measures have

shown that solutions tailored to the national and local

context are very necessary, but they do not represent

the “holy grail” of countering the global phenomenon

of disinformation (Radu, 2020). The article notes that

the type of state regime (democratic, non-democratic)

does not have a significant impact on the content of

anti-disinformation legislation in relation to

restrictions on freedom of expression and long-term

deterrent effects; limiting access to information,

criminalizing critical and “unpatriotic” messages, and

faster delete of content using artificial intelligence on

social platforms will negatively affect a person's

ability to distinguish between harmful and truthful

information.

Russian researchers performed an analysis of

socially dangerous situations associated with the

spread of coronavirus infection, the authors of which

state that the criminalization of individual contents

takes into account short-term interests and is not

thoughtful or systemic in nature (Tarhanov et al.,

2020). Taking into account the above, it can be

concluded that regulatory legal acts promptly adopted

in emergency conditions, such as changes in the

Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, require

further improvement (Shkabin et al., 2020).

Not all students knew about the criminal liability

for reposting knowingly false information. So, the

question: “Did you know that you can be prosecuted,

including for reposting knowingly false information

about the coronavirus, for its subsequent

dissemination in oral or written form under Art. 207.1

and 207.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian

Federation?” was asked, and 64.9% of the

respondents answered that they knew about the

responsibility, 35.1% were not aware. Experimental

data on social norms study (Andi & Akesson, 2020)

can be a good way to reduce the incidence of false

reposting. The authors of the experiment developed a

"social norm" that includes placing text over links to

articles in social media channels. This text warns

people that there is a lot of misinformation on the

Internet and tells them that the most responsible

people will think twice before sharing articles through

their network. In addition to the warning, it is

proposed to place tags to check the facts of

information falsity (Clayton et al., 2020).

Another confirmation of the lack of the necessary

legal awareness of the population is the answers to the

question: “Did you know that defamation that a

person is sick with coronavirus entails criminal

liability (Part 4 Art. 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the

Russian Federation)? " 64.9% of respondents do not

know about responsibility, 35.1% of respondents are

informed about its existence.

The final research question: “Will you now

disseminate any information that has become known

to you without checking its reliability?” was asked,

and 81.8% (63 people) of the respondents answered

“never”, which is a good result, 14.3% - sometimes,

3.9 % (3 people out of 77) answered “yes”. But such

results are unsustainable as the ability to better

understand feelings, moods and emotions in online

communication is growing rapidly thanks to the

introduction of online and biofeedback technologies

that are designed to record and evaluate people's

emotions - what McStay calls “empathic media”

Bakir & McStay, 2018).

Perhaps the survey conducted will make the

respondents think about the consequences of the

dissemination of information that has not been

verified for its reliability. In the comments to the

survey, students left various impressions: cognitive;

it even makes you think, sometimes people

themselves do not understand that they are lying or

violating, since they themselves believe in it; I

learned a lot of new things, henceforth I will be more

attentive to dubious sources of information; the

survey was useful, I learned some for the first time,

perhaps I would like more questions about the current

problem; I believe that everyone should read the libel

article and think before spreading false information;

useful survey; actual survey to date; I should think.

The above reviews about the benefits of such an

informative survey, the purpose of which is not only

to obtain information from respondents, but also to

familiarize the respondents with legislative novelties

in criminal law, provide them with information to

analyze their own actions, show its effectiveness as a

criminal means of counteracting public dissemination

of knowingly false information.

In addition, it should be noted that it is important

to develop computerized systems to detect false

information, in particular, an updated deep neural

network is proposed, which demonstrates better

results compared to the existing results of basic

machine learning models (Abdelminaam et al., 2021).

4 CONCLUSIONS

1. The phenomenon of false information is an

object of research not only in the social and

humanitarian sciences, but also in technical

Public Dissemination of Knowingly False Information: Criminal and Criminological Aspects

sciences, therefore, when investigating the

subject of a crime – knowingly false

information, it is required to take into account

the results of scientific and experimental

research in various sciences.

2. The reasons and conditions for the public

dissemination of knowingly false information

and its repost are different: from altruism,

ignorance of the laws and the desire to increase

their authority in the microsocial group to

selfish goals.

3. The results of the survey conducted by the

author of this work show the necessity and

usefulness of conducting similar surveys on

current changes in legislation among students

of higher educational institutions, which is a

preventive criminal mean of counteracting the

commission of criminal offenses and an object

for scientific research.

4. In order to reduce cases of public dissemination

of knowingly false information, it is necessary

to use the experience of foreign researchers in

placing warnings and tags for information with

a note about its possible falsity.

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ACTIVITIES: PROBLEMS OF LEGISLATION, SCIENCE AND PRACTICE”