Sweden's Psychological Defence Agency — A National Institution to Counter Foreign Disinformation

Established on 1 January 2022 under Sweden's Ministry of Defence, the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency (Myndigheten för psykologiskt försvar, MPF) is a dedicated national institution tasked with identifying, analysing and countering foreign information influence activities directed at Sweden, building on tracking of Russian influence infrastructure since 2014.

MPF's mission is to coordinate and strengthen Swedish psychological defence across agencies, municipalities, regions, companies and organisations, and to build the resilience of the Swedish population against foreign disinformation.

The agency employs roughly 60 staff across three departments - administrative, capability-building and operational. In its most detailed documented case, it identified an Arabic-language disinformation outlet spreading false claims that Swedish child-protection services (LVU) were abducting Muslim children, partnered with Swedish public broadcasters to expose the campaign's extremist origins, and briefed the Prime Minister, who held a press conference addressing it directly. The agency has since expanded into public education, publishing handbooks for journalists (with the Fojo media institute) and citizens, and supporting the international 'Ctrl+Alt+Disinfo' game jam on media literacy with participants from Ukraine and 26 other countries.

The disinformation outlet case is described by the agency itself as 'a small platform with very few people' that nonetheless proved highly effective at generating conflict and hatred in Arabic-speaking communities - illustrating both the risk MPF was built to address and the scale at which a single case can escalate.

Independent analysis (New Eastern Europe, 2024) notes the agency has published no quantified effectiveness metrics - its own account of impact rests on this single detailed case study and unspecified vulnerability-monitoring work, making its resilience-building approach easier to document than to measure.