Un Democracy & Disinformation How Autocrats Use the Infodemic

Everyone seems to agree that disinformation poses significant challenges for democratic regimes due to the difficulty in building consensus within a confusing media landscape. However, while the focus is on democracies, the "alternative systems", either so-called illiberal democracies or straight-up dictatorships, escape our focus. In these cases, it seems the spread of disinformation actually provides opportunities from promoting anti-democratic narratives to implementing new measures that further entrench the "ruler" into the realms of power. More than that, in order to cover up their lack of proper management during this crisis, they push alternate narratives in democratic countries meant to confuse and manipulate people.

The discussion will compare how different types of regimes react in this period to the “infodemic” and what strategies these regimes have, how they are affecting human rights, and which countries are using the pandemic as a pretext to take illiberal measures.