Resilience against Disinformation & Hate Speech

The dark side of the digital media worlds is clearly the many possibilities to play out channels and ways of disinformation and to spread them with great reach. It is not only the social media platforms that make it difficult to assess the quality of sources, not only because "likes" or "followers" are not good indicators or the algorithms do not curate according to quality or truthfulness, but also because classic media are finding it increasingly difficult not to fall for disinformation by populist politicians. What is gladly forgotten: Disinformation is part of the communication strategy of populist politicians or right-wing extremists. Like boulders, they block our public discourse and also take topics and truthfulness out of the daily media agenda.

It is worthwhile to strengthen the resilience (= resistance) of society. This applies to political public relations as well as to journalism or the news competence of citizens, because anyone who is involved in the democratic communication process can become a gateway or disseminator of disinformation. 

In workshops and seminars we help society to increase its resilience towards disinformation. So far, we have advised members of the European Commission, the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as editorial offices in Germany and abroad or civil society organizations on what strategies are promising in dealing with disinformation, what role debunking plays or what monitoring can look like.