Polarisation, News Consumption, and Beliefs in Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories: Early Signs of the Fragmentation of the Public Sphere in Iceland
Project: RECLAIM
Special Issue: Javnost - The Public
Authors: Jón Gunnar Ólafsson & Valgerður Jóhannsdóttir
A common explanation linked to increased polarisation has focused on changes in citizens’ information diets, with like-minded people apparently becoming increasingly isolated in online echo chambers. This article investigates whether news audience polarisation has increased …
Exploring affective Polarisation of the (Digital) Public Sphere in Slovenia: The Case of Marshal Twito
Project: RECLAIM
Special Issue: Javnost - The Public
Authors: Melika Mahmutović & Marko Lovec
The last decade saw the issue of polarisation garnering increased scholarly attention. While political polarisation has been almost unequivocally studied as synonymous with ideological polarisation, scholars have recently addressed polarisation along partisan lines manifesting through strong …
Does the Centre Hold? Public Sphere Configuration, Democracy, and the Quality of Political Talk in Sweden
Project: RECLAIM
Special Issue: Javnost - The Public
Author: Peter Strandbrink
In the present article, key conceptual and regulative requirements for quality public democratic talk to be maintained are identified and the linguistic economy of civic conversation about common affairs in the Swedish public sphere gauged; the relationship between public …
Fragmented and Polarised? The German Public Sphere during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Project: RECLAIM
Special Issue: Javnost - The Public
Author: Maximilian Conrad
The digital age has brought about fundamental questions about the viability of the public sphere. While a shared and inclusive communicative space is widely considered to be a fundamental requirement for democratic deliberation, the rise of social (and other …
What Is the EU’s Vision of Democracy in the Post-Truth Scenario? A Conceptual Analysis of the Institutional Narratives of the Public Sphere in the “Democracy Action Plan”
Project: RECLAIM
Special Issue: Javnost - The Public
Authors: Elena García-Guitián, Luis Bouza & Taru Haapala
Contributing to recent academic and public debates on how European democracies should respond to a scenario of “post-truth politics”, this article explores the idea of democracy that underlies current regulatory responses in the “European …
Not About Facts, but Emotions? Political Polarisation as a Problem of Redescription
Project: RECLAIM
Special Issue: Javnost - The Public
Author: Jeremias Schledorn
Political polarisation, e.g. following the refugee movements of 2015 or the Covid pandemic, is often explained by emotions. The latter are widely exploited as a political strategy, while points of view are often discredited as based on mere emotion …
Fugitive Truth: Renewing the Public Sphere in the Age of Post-Truth
Project: RECLAIM
Special Issue: Javnost - The Public
Author: Saul Newman
In the sixty years since the publication of Jürgen Habermas' magnum opus, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the public sphere now faces a new threat in the era of “post-truth” politics. The preponderance of lies, mis/disinformation, “fake …
Civil society coalitions in the EU media regulation: when field theory meets network analysis
Project: RECLAIM
Authors: Luis Bouza, Juan Roch and Álvaro Oleart
The field of Eurocracy has increasingly been shaped by the emergence of actors lobbying on the area of digital regulation, which has heavily increased during the Von der Leyen Commission. We study the extra-institutional actor networks that have been involved …
Journalists’ responses: Case studies comparative report
Project: RECLAIM
Authors of the Report: Jacopo Custodi (SNS), Hans-Joerg Trenz (SNS) and Martin Moland (ARENA)
This report presents and analyses the comparative results of an investigation conducted in late 2023 and early 2024 on journalism and its relationship with the issue of dis/misinformation in 7 different countries – Poland, …
Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm
Editors: Saul Newman and Maximilian Conrad
Project: RECLAIM
This open access book analyses the convergence between ‘post-truth’ political culture and the politics of populism. The premise is that there is an intrinsic link between post-truth discourse (referring to mis/disinformation, ‘alternative facts’, ‘fake news’, conspiracy theories and the general distrust of …
Public opinion survey: Country comparative reports and Citizens’ experiments: Data report
Project: RECLAIM
Authors: Martin Moland (ARENA), Asimina Michailidou (ARENA), Jacopo Custodi (SNS) and Hans-Jörg Trenz (SNS)
This report begins by presenting country-level responses to questions regarding journalistic characteristics, functions, their perceived importance and fact-checking (D4.3). Subsequently, we present the results of our survey experiment (D4.6).
The European approach to online disinformation: geopolitical and regulatory dissonance
Authors: Andreu Casero-Ripollés, Jorge Tuñón and Luis Bouza-García
Project: RECLAIM
The COVID-19 health crisis and the invasion of Ukraine have placed disinformation in the focus of European policies. This article aims to analyze the emerging European policy on counter-disinformation practices and regulations. To this end the article examines developing European …
Regulating Disinformation and Big Tech in the EU: A Research Agenda on the Institutional Strategies, Public Spheres and Analytical Challenges
Authors: Luis Bouza García and Alvaro Oleart
Project: RECLAIM
The growing influence of social media platforms, and the disinformation that circulates in them, has transformed the public spheres. How to deal with disinformation is an open normative, empirical and political question in contemporary democracies. This article, outlines an agenda on …
Report: RECLAIM Breakfast Roundtable
Democracy through policy dialogue
This closed-door event aimed to facilitate a constructive and interactive dialogue between policy-makers and project researchers. Designed to connect RECLAIM's academic findings with practical policy needs, the event fostered open, small-group roundtable discussions.
Report of Midterm Conference
The RECLAIM midterm conference, hosted on 13 March 2024 by IIR Prague, focused on the role of journalism and regulation in addressing post-truth politics and reclaiming liberal democracy. Recording from the conference can be found on the RECLAIM website, reclaim.hi.is.
Report of Belgian Pre-Presidency Panel, November 2023
Report from the RECLAIM panel "Building Democratic Resilience in Europe" at TEPSA's Belgian Pre-Presidency conference in November 2023.
Report: Pre-Presidency Conference 2023
Panel at TEPSA’s Spanish Pre-Presidency Conference “Reclaiming Public Debates as an EU Response to Post Truth Challenges: Deliberation, quality information and citizen education”, Madrid, 1 June 2023
Report: Pre-Presidency Conference 2022
Panel at TEPSA’s Swedish Pre-Presidency Conference “The Future of the Union and its Fundamental Values”, Stockholm 1 December 2022
Report: RECLAIM Kick-Off Conference
The following report summarizes the main themes and discussions of the RECLAIM kick-off conference in Reykjavík.