COGNITIVE SECURITY AND INSTITUTIONAL TRUST: A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS TARGETING THE LEGITIMACY OF JUDICIAL AND LAW ENFORCEMENT INSTITUTIONS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54658/ps.28153324.2025.14.4.pp.45-56Keywords:
Disinformation, institutional trust, disinformation campaigns, information disorder, legitimacy, judicial institutions, law enforcement, misinformation diffusionAbstract
Disinformation campaigns increasingly operate as hybrid influence tactics that undermine institutional trust by contesting the epistemic authority of courts and law enforcement. This article develops a sociological account of cognitive security as a governance-relevant capacity: the ability of individuals and communities to maintain reliable belief-updating under conditions of strategic information manipulation. Building on established research on information disorder, misinformation diffusion, and resistance to correction, the article specifies a mechanism linking disinformation to institutional legitimacy. The mechanism combines (i) narrative frames that recode procedural outcomes as political repression or corruption, (ii) repeated exposure within high-engagement networks that accelerates diffusion of low-credibility claims, and (iii) cognitive and motivational frictions that hinder correction, including continued-influence effects. The analysis synthesizes peer-reviewed evidence on misinformation spread and correction and comparative survey indicators of institutional confidence to derive empirically testable expectations about when disinformation is most likely to translate into trust erosion. Boundary conditions and competing explanations—such as pre-existing polarization, performance-based dissatisfaction, and media-market fragmentation—are specified to avoid overattribution. The contribution is twofold: conceptually, it ties cognitive security to legitimacy processes in legal and policing institutions; methodologically, it outlines a transparent evidence-selection and triangulation protocol suitable for comparative research and policy evaluation.
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