Events | Threats to Democracies – Media and the 2024 Elections in Transatlantic Perspective | Workshop

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | October 23, 2024 – October 24, 2024

Threats to Democracies – Media and the 2024 Elections in Transatlantic Perspective

On October 23 & 24, the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is hosting the two-day event Threats to Democracies: A Transatlantic Workshop on Media and the 2024 Elections, in partnership with UNC Global Affairs, Thomas Mann House Los Angeles, and the UNC Center for European Studies, and co-sponsored by the UNC School of Information and Library Science. This event will bring together renowned experts to discuss the critical challenges to democracies in the U.S. and Europe, with a particular focus on media, technology, and election dynamics.

Scroll down to see the full program.

Please note: The workshop is by invitation only, but all are welcome to attend the Fireside Chat on Thursday at 5pm. Find more information here.

We are at a pivotal moment for global democracies. Not since the early 20th century have consolidated democracies in Europe and North America — and well beyond — faced serious threats to their legitimacy from external and internal actors. Externally, this includes information warfare conducted by non-democratic powers seeking to undermine democratic and liberal consensus through propaganda and mis- and disinformation. Internally, in countries from the United States and Italy to Germany and France, it includes the rise of anti-democratic leaders, parties, and movements, often based on nativist, exclusionary identitarian politics in backlash to migration and strides towards equality of historically non-dominant racial, ethnic, and religious groups.

To date, two bodies of largely separate academic scholarship have analyzed these dynamics — and developed interventions to combat them. On the one hand, scholars of political institutions and political psychology study parties, coalitions, and public opinion, including through comparative methods, while often failing to address rapid changes in media in the context of democratic backsliding. On the other, communication and media scholars have extensively analyzed media and digital propaganda, mis/disinformation, social media polarization, and  networked far right movements, while rarely linking these things to political institutions.

The aim of this initiative is to bring these disparate threads of research together in order to more comprehensively understand and analyze democratic threats — and invest in the political institutions democracies rely on. Above all, we seek to develop public-facing research that informs public debate, media and platform policies, and interventions from civil society and policymakers.

 

Program

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

10:00 AM – 11:45 AM | Media, Technological Change, and Democratic Threats

 

This panel explores the new challenges democracies on both sides of the Atlantic face from media and technological changes, with an emphasis on elections.

Moderator:

Daniel Kreiss, Principal Investigator, CITAP & Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media

Panelists:

Francesca Tripodi, Principal Investigator, CITAP & Associate Professor, UNC School of Information and Library Science

Guido Zurstiege, Professor for Media Studies, University of Tübingen

Tobias Wilke, Assistant Professor of German, UNC Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures

Gregor Asmolov, Lecturer in Digital Entrepreneurship and Marketing, King's College London

Jianing Li, Assistant Professor of Communication, Rutgers University Department of Communication.

1:30 PM – 3:15 PM | Transatlantic Narratives of Race, Ethnicity, Religion, and Immigration

 

This panel focuses on how social cleavages around race, ethnicity, religion, and immigration are weaponized in political narratives and elections.

 

Moderator

Ulrike Klinger, Professor for Digital Democracy, European New School of Digital Studies

Panelists:

Meredith Clark, Principal Investigator, CITAP & Associate Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media

Jen Schradie, Associate Professor, Center for Research on Social Inequalities, Sciences Po

Priscilla Layne, Director of the UNC Center for European Studies & Professor of German, UNC Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures

Sarah J. Jackson, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania & Co-Director, Media, Inequality & Change Center

Frank Baumgartner, Professor of Political Science, UNC Department of Political Science

Robert Jenkins, Teaching Professor, UNC Department of Political Science

 

Thursday, October 24, 2024

10:00 AM – 11:45 AM | Media and Authoritarianism, Anti-Democratic Parties, Fascism, and the Far Right

 

This panel examines the resurgence of authoritarianism and anti-democratic politics, with a focus on how media and technology facilitate these trends.

Moderator:

Ulrike Klinger, Professor for Digital Democracy, European New School of Digital Studies

Panelists:

Alice Marwick, Director of Research, Data & Society

Johannes Gerschweski, Research Fellow, Department of Global Governance, WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Jakob Norberg, Professor of German Studies, Duke University

Christiane Lemke, Emerita Professor of Political Science and International Relations, UNC Department of Political Science

Annett Heft, Research Project Lead, Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

1:30 PM – 3:15 PM | Media and Polarization


This panel addresses the role of media in increasing polarization, disinformation, and division during election campaigns.

Moderator:

Daniel Kreiss, Principal Investigator, CITAP & Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media

Panelists:

Shannon McGregor, Principal Investigator, CITAP & Associate Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media

Frank Esser, Professor of International & Comparative Media Research, Universität Zürich.

Pola Lehmann, Research Fellow, Center for Civil Society Research, WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Stanislav Shvabrin, Russian Program Director & Associate Professor of Russian, UNC Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures

Radik Lapushin, Associate Professor of Russian Literature, UNC Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures

Chad Bryant, Professor, UNC Department of History

5:00-6:30 pm | Fireside Chat

 

Freedom Forum Conference Center, Carroll Hall.

A fireside chat on “Media Coverage of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election: The View from Germany and the United States”.

With:

  • Tressie McMillan Cottom, a New York Times columnist, Principal Investigator, CITAP & Associate Professor, UNC School of Information and Library Science
  • Juliane Schäuble, U.S. Correspondent, Tagesspiegel Newspaper

Moderated by:

  • Daniel Kreiss, Principal Investigator, CITAP & Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media

RSVP here!

 

 

UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, in partnership with UNC Global Affairs, Thomas Mann House Los Angeles, and the UNC Center for European Studies, and co-sponsored by the UNC School of Information and Library Science.

Go back