Common contemporary informational realities such as fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda challenge societies and raise questions of media integrity and social stability. Politicians, politicised terror and extremist movements, far right groups, and ‘unknown entity’ hacking attacks perplex sociopolitical existence.

Media professionalism can be assessed based on public commitments or commercialisation approaches. Meaning that as public interest oriented media measures upon principles of safeguarding the public good, commercial commodification of media measures effectiveness of their efforts based on profit, rating, and ability to attract audience. Simultaneously citizens’ political comprehension and decision-making on their own do not conclude in their sufficient and effective level of comprehension of the country’s political situation and governance, therefore there is no guarantee of ability to use information for effective political reasoning. Citizens’ choice is not always rational and based on analyses of alternatives.

Transparency and accessibility of government activities are noted to be closely linked to an outcome of good communication strategy rather than political openness and wholeheartedness. Fake news disrupt social cohesion and can serve to ignite geopolitical conflicts. May 2017 hacking of the Qatari state news agency and upload of a fabricated news story on the site led to further media negativity, tensions dangerously able to transform into physical clashes, as well computational propaganda with social media’s increased presence of ‘cut relations with Qatar’ (as translated from Arabic) hashtag.

Assessment of the incident discussed the seriousness of ramifications of the contemporary fake news reality, however, fake news and hoax are known to have been around for ages. ICJF International Journalists’ Network states that misinformation, disinformation and propaganda have been around at least since Roman times. In 44 BC Gaius Octavius launched a propaganda campaign against Mark Anthony aimed at destruction of Anthony’s reputation. While that campaign became engraved on coins, invention of the Gutenberg printing press in 1493 became the stepping stone to amplified dissemination of questionable information. Throughout further history, changes in gatekeeping, censorship and communication adjustments later, news became the contemporary reality.

The initially accustomed objective journalism or news journalism aimed to distribute opinions of a particular political party, later began to transmit and expose the public to wide range of options to retain audience attention and stay ahead of competition. Mass media enables significant creation of public’s perception of the world. While the influence of media is neither absolute nor direct and media constitutes only part of numerous channels in the individual’s surrounding, perceptions are not necessarily produced through direct experience and interactions. The peculiar construct of social and political engineering in its limited way produces and reproduces generalised meanings, stereotypes, shared social occurrences. Notable contribution to knowledge was made by researchers of mediation techniques and technology enabled content filtration in their study on consequences of violence. Reproduction of stereotypes, prejudices, fears, etc. relies on complex social surrounding and further propelled by leaders of opinion who in today’s technology mediated reality could range from city’s mayor to YouTube influencers and prominent figure among adherents of a particular extremist movement or terrorist organisation.

Nonetheless, effective interpersonal connections and their primacy in formation of attitudes of individuals makes other than media communication channels highly valuable to satisfaction of human needs. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the limited affects of the media, individual selectivity of the recipient, significance of the time factor when it comes influence and residual memorability of the media, all attesting for lack of media absolutism.

Regardless of their public or private approaches, journalists are advised to increase participants’ awareness of the history of uses of news formats for reasons alien to journalistic ethics and standards, enable better recognition of the context of instrumentalising information for personal or political gain, profit, or entertainment purposes. Moreover, to reapproach confusing and misleading information however dramatically or satirically it is presented and be prepared to analyse new threats in historic contexts. While media does not impose exact ideas, it does serve to set forth importance and priority of events arranged in social imagery. Islamic extremist propaganda has been noted to use realistic looking AI-generated characters in military fatigues emulating real news broadcasters to read news-like segments sourced from official Islamic State news efforts. Humanoid broadcasters with Islamic State logo and news resembling atmosphere, while raising theological ramifications about artificial intelligence (AI) use in media produced under Islamic law, are noted by ICSVE to closely emulate the popular television networks such as Al Jazeera and CNN.

Ideologically politicised Islam pertains to matters of faith, spirit and morality, however notably overwhelmed by politico-legal considerations often leading up to creation and governance of an Islamic state. Clashes of local and global identity brought forth an idea and tangible identity conception of globalised Islam, a sense of transnationalism of its own. While radicalised people are reminded to in no way be the spokespeople of the Muslim population, some proponents of radical Islam are described to encourage the idea to launch analogous programming in English, as well as other languages to increase accessibility and to enhance engagement with Western Muslim audiences. Furthermore, it is necessary to understand the demands posed by transition to digital platforms and broadening number of channels, as well as liberalisation of audiovisual sector and their implications for upheld standards of communication.

Development of the world wide web and innovation has been distinguished as creation for the public and upheld freedoms. It was aimed for everyone’s use and part of collective good based on libertarian ideas. Social involvement of Internet users varies by country and can significantly differ, nonetheless Internet has benefited tremendously from regular users that through their creations contributed to the web, and enabled constitution of main practices that lay at the foundation of the Internet’s usage.

In their November 2023 briefing on Early terrorist experimentation with generative artificial intelligence services Tech Against Terrorism brought forth a taxonomy to provide better understanding of terrorist and violent extremism use of generative AI. Discussed were media spawning, automated multilingual translation, fully synthetic propaganda, variant recycling, personalised propaganda, subverting moderation. Use of Internet to distribute such content and increase in its sophistication became an increased discussion among various terrorist and extremist groups, as well as the security sector. Concerns arise over new and growing uses of generative AI by terrorist and extremist groups in relation to the work done by tech companies to safeguard the public and keep this disseminated content off the Internet. Not only Islamic terror groups and extremist sources have extended their approaches, the neo-Nazi messaging channels also complemented their content with AI-generated racist and antisemitic prompts. Memetic warfare overall became enhanced and received widespread encouragement to create extremist memes and other content using the new tools available.

Islamic State supporters question the use of artificial intelligence (AI) due to Islamic injunction against use of voice of ‘disbelievers’ to recite Islamic scripture creating a certain theological and philosophical complexity, but perhaps adding to particularity of propaganda and information, often audiovisual created experience and its affects on the consumers of such ideological forms.

While creativity is the basis of any human activity that became professionalised, the freedom of creativity occupies an extremely important place among human freedoms. Historically norms of morality of society as a whole, but also of a particular society called upon people to act properly and set the standard of duty.

Modern conditions emphasise the seriousness of the relationship between social stability and socio-psychological variability. Demassification of mass society, acceleration of socio-historical transformations, symbolisation and depersonalisation of communication in information networks contradict the illusion of the absence of threats and dangers in the casual consciousness of an average citizen. Moreover, intersubjectivity of interactions distinguished by sense of anonymity, merging with a big group, and loss of own identity create conditions for increased aggression. At the same time, information security can not only prevent the emergence of threats to the psychological stability and sustainability, but also initially have favourable predisposition toward resilience due to possession of qualities that contribute to the positive psychological stability of an individual. Such qualities include problem-solving and emotion management, physical activity that improves mood and health, positive anticipation, spirituality, social support, cognitive flexibility, objective interpreation of the traumatic event, ability to reevaluate adverse events in a more positive sense, and acceptance.

The stability of the social space is ensured by an optimal balance of interests of subjects. Studies report that people’s perception of risks differs in different social circumstances and includes development of subjective perceptions of risk and individual strategies of behaviour.