On 29 January 2026, Prof. Vera Tolz gave a lecture titled ‘Echoes of Deceit: Media, Health Crises and the Disinformation Lifecycle’ at the Department of International Relations, Central European University, Vienna.
This lecture presents a new conceptual model of disinformation that emphasises the performative nature of disinformation accusations as they circulate across temporal, geopolitical, and linguacultural contexts. It shows how claims shift between primary (disinformation) and secondary (counterdisinformation) discourses and argues that this lifecycle operates in both digital and predigital environments. Using the 1980s AIDS virus controversy as a case study, the lecture highlights how UK and US actors, independent of but occasionally aligned with the Soviet influence campaign, produced and amplified significant disinformation through Anglophone media. The analysis raises broader questions about prevailing assumptions regarding authoritarian versus democratic actors and the supposed divide between pre and digital age information dynamics.