ZURICH - The study rests on a representative online survey of 1,222 adults. Fifty-two percent said they often or very often meet content that is clearly or probably disinformation. Asked where it spreads, 76 percent named social media, 60 percent video platforms such as YouTube, 44 percent messaging apps and 43 percent AI chatbots. Journalism was far less often blamed, which the authors take as a sign that newsrooms are still seen as part of the remedy.
Who is actually persuaded
Concern is not the same as belief, but belief is wider than many editors like to admit. Thirty-four percent called it plausible or very plausible that 5G networks demonstrably cause serious harm to health. Thirty-seven percent said the same of the claim that governments use climate change as a pretext to control the population. "These findings show that disinformation resonates with a significant proportion of the population," said Mark Eisenegger, co-director of fög. "At the same time, many people are not at the mercy of it."
What separates the two groups is the news diet, not how many hours someone spends online. Readers who mix private quality papers with public-service radio and television were less open to conspiracy claims. People who barely follow the news, or who get almost all of it from TikTok and Instagram, were more open to them. Social media alone, Eisenegger said, "does not provide any discernible protection" unless journalistic sources sit alongside it. Spotting the usual tricks, fake evidence and crude oversimplification, also helps. Keystone-SDA, reporting the same yearbook, put the share who see fake news as a major problem at 56.5 percent, and said 42 percent are "news-deprived": they either skip current affairs or pick them up in fragments on social platforms.
The news itself is getting thinner
Media quality held steady in 2025, the yearbook's long-running scores show, while diversity did not. Nearly one article in three in the German-speaking Swiss press appeared in more than one publication. In national political coverage the duplication rate reached 44.7 percent. Audiences, loyalty and revenue are all under pressure at the same time as false claims travel faster. That matters in a month when voters are still making up their minds on four federal proposals. A public that meets the same wire copy in several papers, and the rest of its politics on a phone, is the public this study is describing.