The Receptive Terrain: Conspiracy Belief and Romania’s Vulnerability to Foreign Information Manipulation

A new EIR policy brief examines the public attitudes that create fertile ground for foreign information manipulation, and what Romania and the European Union can do about them. Read or download the full policy brief below.

Researchers: Ana Maria Dobra, Cosima Rughiniș, Răzvan Rughiniș and Dinu Țurcanu

The Receptive Terrain EIR July 2026.pdf

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The annulment of Romania’s 2024 presidential election brought unprecedented attention to the country’s exposure to foreign information manipulation and interference. Yet much of the debate has focused on the supply side: the networks, platforms and actors responsible for producing and amplifying manipulative content.

This new policy brief from the Europinion Institute for Research turns to the other side of the equation. It asks how receptive the Romanian public is to the conspiratorial narratives on which influence operations frequently depend.

The brief also addresses an important evidence gap. The European External Action Service’s latest FIMI Threat Report does not cover the Romanian presidential election episode because its data collection ended in early November 2024. The Receptive Terrain therefore provides a demand-side assessment of vulnerability in Romania following the crisis.

What the research finds

Drawing on a nationally representative survey conducted by INSOMAR in July 2025, the authors examine responses to the 15-item Generic Conspiracist Beliefs scale. The survey included 1,012 Romanian adults, with the principal analysis focusing on 494 respondents who gave substantive answers without repeating the same response across every question.

The results reveal widespread receptivity to narratives centred on concealed information, manipulative elites and unaccountable power.

Among respondents who expressed a view:

• 86% agreed that important information is deliberately concealed from the public;

• 74% believed that beneficial technologies are being suppressed;

• 72% believed that scientists manipulate or falsify evidence;

• 67–71% endorsed claims concerning secret groups controlling major events or political decisions.

  
  

By contrast, claims involving extraterrestrial contact attracted substantially lower levels of endorsement. This suggests that the pattern is not simply one of indiscriminate credulity, but is particularly concentrated around questions of power, knowledge and institutional trust.

The analysis also identifies a sizeable group of uncertain respondents. Roughly one quarter of the wider sample answered “don’t know” to most of the conspiracy-belief items, indicating a potentially persuadable audience rather than a population divided only between committed believers and non-believers.

A vulnerability rooted in distrust

Conspiracy belief is not distributed evenly across Romanian society.

It is markedly higher among people who distrust national institutions, are dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy, experience economic strain or have low trust in the European Union. The sharpest contrast concerns attitudes towards the EU: respondents with low EU trust recorded an average conspiracy-belief score of 2.68, compared with 2.17 among those with higher trust.

This overlap is especially important for understanding foreign information manipulation on NATO and the EU’s eastern flank. The groups most receptive to conspiratorial narratives are also those most alienated from the institutions and geopolitical relationships that hostile influence operations often seek to undermine.

From debunking stories to strengthening resilience

The brief argues that Romania’s vulnerability cannot be reduced to a collection of individual pieces of false information. It is rooted in a broader climate of institutional distrust, democratic dissatisfaction, economic insecurity and uncertainty.

The authors therefore recommend:

• inoculating audiences against recurring manipulation techniques rather than responding only after individual falsehoods have circulated;

• directing media and information literacy programmes towards lower-trust and economically vulnerable groups;

• treating institutional transparency and responsiveness as components of national security;

• communicating the concrete local benefits of EU membership to citizens who feel economically or politically alienated;

• establishing an annual demand-side assessment of conspiracy belief, uncertainty and vulnerability to manipulation.

The central conclusion is clear in elucidating that Romania’s resilience will depend not only on readily identifying the next hostile campaign, but on reducing the receptive terrain on which such campaigns operate.

Front cover image: Lucian Nuță/Wikimedia Commons

Licence. Photo changes made.