Lisbon, June 16, 2026 (Lusa) - Three out of four Portuguese people say they are concerned about disinformation, placing Portugal among the countries most concerned about this phenomenon, according to the Digital News Report Portugal 2026 (DNRPT26) published on Tuesday.
“One of the most important issues this year is the concern about disinformation, which rose again in 2026,” OberCom researcher Ana Pinto Martinho told Lusa, commenting on the findings of the DNRPT26, the 12th annual report produced by OberCom - the Communication Observatory, in partnership with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) at the University of Oxford.
"In this study, around 76% of Portuguese people say they are concerned (...) about disinformation and about what is real and fake on the internet," which places Portugal among the countries "where this concern is greatest", within the markets analysed, she continues.
The researcher highlights that "one of the very important things here is that this concern is even more intense among citizens who continue to trust professional journalism". Among those who trust the news, "concern about disinformation reaches 85%".
“We have findings that suggest that the Portuguese are increasingly able to distinguish between credible journalistic information and misleading content circulating in digital environments” and “I think this is actually good news”, emphasises Ana Pinto Martinho.
According to the study, around 76% of Portuguese people say they are concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet, placing Portugal among the countries most concerned about this phenomenon in the world, above the global average of 62%.
"The country features in the group of markets with the highest levels of concern, alongside countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Australia and the United States, and stands out clearly in Southern Europe, above Spain, Greece, Turkey, Italy and Croatia," according to the study.
The concern "worsened significantly in 2026, both in Portugal and across the markets analysed. Globally, the average rose by 4 percentage points compared to 2025, from 58% to 62%, and this increase was observed in 43 of the 48 countries surveyed".
In Portugal, “the rise is even steeper: from 71% in 2025 to 76% in 2026, that is, an increase of 5 percentage points in a single year”.
In summary, concern about online disinformation intensified once again in 2026, and Portugal once more features among the countries where this concern is highest.
In this regard, disinformation or fake news “is no longer a peripheral or temporary concern: it has become a widespread, structural and socially marked phenomenon, associated both with the perception of risk in the digital environment and with the relationship with journalism itself”, the report states.
The socio-demographic distribution of this concern indicates that it is more pronounced among older, better-educated, higher-income groups and, in several segments, among women.
In terms of gender, younger women “show higher levels of concern than men”.
This contrast is most significant among 18-24 year-olds, where 70% of women in this age group say they are concerned about what is real and fake on the internet, compared to 57% of men of the same age.
Throughout the life cycle, “concern remains high among both sexes, but women tend to show consistently higher levels across almost all age groups”.
The study, which includes data from 48 markets and over 97,000 respondents worldwide, paints a detailed picture of the news consumption habits of Portuguese internet users, with a representative national sample of 2,024 respondents; the data was collected between 6 January and 20 February 2026.
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