This publication brings together two complementary analyses prepared by Prof. Dr. Arije Antinori and Jordy Nijenhuis, to examine how Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) operates in contemporary information environments.

The first paper prepared by Prof. Antinori, Radicalisation and FIMI in the Western Balkans Cyber-Social Ecosystem, analyses the Western Balkans as a highly contested information space in which FIMI functions through a hybrid infrastructure of digital platforms, legacy media, domestic political actors, transnational relays, and increasingly automated amplification that fuels radicalisation in the region. It shows that the region’s vulnerability lies not only in foreign narratives themselves, but in the interaction between fragile media systems, polarised political contexts, platformised news consumption, and local actors capable of translating external manipulation into domestic conflict. In this sense, FIMI is presented not as an isolated messaging problem, but as an ecosystemic one.

The second paper prepared by Jordy Nijenhuis, Ambient Radicalisation: How FIMI Exploits Polarisation, builds on this structural view by examining how such information environments affect audiences and societies over time. It argues that radicalisation today cannot be understood only as a process of direct ideological recruitment into extremist movements. Increasingly, it unfolds through diffuse, cumulative, and emotionally charged exposure to manipulative content that deepens distrust, sharpens divisions, and normalises more extreme interpretations of reality. The paper introduces the concept of ambient radicalisation to capture this broader process, in which the target is not only the individual at risk, but society as a whole.