The aftermath of the 2016 US Presidential Elections and the Brexit campaign in Europe have opened the floor to heated debates about fake news and the dangers that these phenomena pose to elections and to democracy, in general. Despite a growing body of scholarly literature on fake news and its close relatives misinformation, disinformation or, more encompassing, communication and information disorders, few studies have so far attempted to empirically account for the effects that fake news might have, especially with respect to what communication scholars call the third person effect. This study aims to provide empirical evidence for the third person effect in the case of people’s self-perceived ability to detect fake news and of their perception of others’ ability to detect it. Based on a survey run in August 2018 and comprising a national, diverse sample of Romanian adults ( N = 813), this research reveals that there is a significant third person effect regarding people’s self-reported ability to spot fake news and that this effect is stronger when people compare their fake news detection literacy to that of distant others than to that close others. Furthermore, this study shows that the most important predictors of third person effect related to fake news detection are education, income, interest in politics, Facebook dependency and confirmation bias, with age being a non-significant predictor.

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The present paper aims to address a demand-side perspective of bioeconomy by laying emphasis on the digitalization of markets and, subsequently, on the consumption patterns at the macroeconomic scale. The imperative for a sustainable economic model corroborated with the advances in digital technologies usage have reconfigured consumers' approaches and expectations and availed new forms of consumer behavior. Among these, the development of consumer-based online communities and of the online intellectual capital have often come forth as an undertaking of empowered consumers pursuing knowledgebased consumption patterns. The quest for sustainable, bio-labeled products on the digital markets has cemented the formation of new social aggregations built on the similarity of interests, goals, values, expectations, preferences, etc., giving way to consistent communication and interaction flows among their members and engendering profound transformations in today's society. Acknowledging all these facts, the study investigates the influences of the online intellectual capital on the consumption patterns through the lens of bioeconomy. The focus is set on the bio products consumption in two European countries (i.e., Romania and Italy), relying on a sample of over 700 active online consumers. Processed via a structural equation modeling technique, the data indicated the existence of significant influences among the considered variables.

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The financial and economic turmoil within the European Union has significantly impacted upon the way in which the European citizens assess the advantages of EU membership and the future of the integration process. Intensely preoccupied with the economic problems, the EU leadership has lost sight of the constant decrease of public support and the increasing lack of citizens' confidence in the Union. This paper seeks to show the dynamics of public opinion between 2008 and 2013 with a special focus on the rise of Euroscepticism, using secondary data analysis of standard Eurobarometers. Our longitudinal analysis reveals the dynamics of EU-related attitudes and perceptions before, during, and after most of events that are usually labeled under the rather generic term "crisis".