This infographic is based on the RECLAIM Discussion Paper “Reimagining the International as a Challenge to Liberal Democracy”, written by Ondřej Ditrych, Jakub Eberle, Linda Monsees and Petr Kratochvíl. The report returns to the recent history of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising populism and foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) by Russia and China to explore how the crisis it produced shaped the contestation between strategic disinformation campaigns and EU’s security apparatuses.

Scholars from a variety of fields such as media studies, sociology, law and political science have examined the spread, impact and possible countermeasures concerning disinformation from a variety of perspectives. A large part of the literature on disinformation in the social sciences engages with the question of how to make sense of the complex phenomena by trying to develop taxonomies, assess national and EU policies and their legality and effectiveness as well as measuring the impact of disinformation. The U.S. election 2016, the Brexit referendum and then the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine are often considered the main accelerators for the spread of disinformation.

This report analyses from a novel vantage point, mobilising critical theoretical conceptual vocabulary to make the complex issue of external challenges for liberal democracies that result from strategic disinformation campaigns better intelligible.
Such reflexive understanding, it proposes, is a necessary condition for competent and sensitive public policy.

Read the report here and download the infographic to find out more.