Conclusions: Mainstream under fire

To what extent do (foreign) disinformation and so-called fake news resonate in political spaces online within social media around the 2019 provincial elections and the European parliamentary elections in the Netherlands? We found no foreign disinformation, fake advocacy groups or imposter news organizations, but we did take notice of a polarised media landscape, where problematic information, including extreme content, is engaged with (liked, shared, retweeted, etc.) or returned in search engines when querying political parties, political leaders as well as social issues. The study ultimately recommends media training as well as disengagement with extreme content, together with a call for continued access to social media platform data for media monitoring purposes.