Siri Sylvan: "Democratic resilience in an age of information warfare"

Siri Sylvan, postdoc at Department of Government, Uppsala University, presents their project about propaganda and democratic resiliance.

This event will be held in Swedish.

Abstract:

Democracy not only requires free and general elections. It also requires a public realm where citizens can interact freely and form their own opinions about common issues. In recent years, efforts to manipulate public opinion through disinformation, ‘malformation’, and propaganda have become increasingly evident. This development underscores the need for political strategies to foster democratic resilience. However, our understanding of resilience depends on how we diagnose the threat.

This project seeks to develop a new interpretation of our contemporary predicament by framing it as an existential, rather than a purely epistemic, challenge. The perspective we aim to explore holds that the danger lies not only in the risk that citizens could be deceived into thinking that lies are truths. The deeper issue is that they could resign from the very task of making such distinctions – that is, the task of actively using their own judgment.