The Minister for Arts, Culture, Media, Sport and Communications, Patrick O'Donovan, said disinformation is a "serious challenge" for democracies around the world and must be met with a whole of Government, society and community response.
Mr O'Donovan has published a National Counter Disinformation Strategy and said he wants to provide citizens and media organisations the tools with which they can "weed out" what is fact and what is rumour.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, he said disinformation and misinformation poses a risk to democracy and to livelihoods.
"We're going to rely on partners - including our public service broadcasters and our commercial broadcasters, and social media platforms as well - to work with us on weeding out something that has become a global scourge," Mr O'Donovan said.
"It's something that we can't allow to be unchallenged in the way that maybe it has been in some jurisdictions," he added.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has criticised the Government's new strategy against disinformation for failing to tackle social media algorithms.
Recommender systems are algorithms that determine what social media users see based on personal data such as search history, past purchases, age and location.
Campaign groups and researchers have warned that these algorithms can be 'toxic' and often result in inappropriate content appearing in users' feeds promoting things like hate, extremism, eating disorders and self-harm.
"For more than a decade, big tech’s clumsy, revenue-optimised algorithms have accidentally pushed Europeans, and everyone else, to extremism, and pushed self-harm and suicide in to our children’s feeds," said Dr Johnny Ryan of ICCL.
"This is an urgent moment for Ireland and Europe, and it requires a bold response. But the Government has opted for more of the same," Dr Ryan said.
