Collaboratively Against Post-Truth Attacks

Post-truth communication (PTC) – in this project understood as the proliferation of unsupported, misleading, and deceptive communication in public discourse – is recognized across disciplines as a Grand Societal Challenge (GSC) for contemporary democracies. Research has shown how PTC fosters the radicalization and polarization of public discourses. In particular, research has focused on how PTC-mobilizing actors (‘attackers’) use misinformation campaigns against established organizations and for anti-democratic backlash. Less explored though are the organizational responses of those being attacked the most – established organizations representing and safeguarding liberal democratic values such as freedom of expression, public representation, and investigative control. ‘CAPTA – Collaboratively Against Post-Truth Attacks’ addresses this urgent need for research by investigating how established organizations respond to PTC. We do so based on interdisciplinary theorizing and transdisciplinary methods. We focus on PTC attacks in terms of disruptive communicative attempts to discredit and re-appropriate established organizations’ interpretative authority over central liberal democratic values in the online sphere. Concretely, CAPTA investigates multiple cases of attacked organizations representing these values and aims at (1) reconstructing PTC attacks and understanding the negotiation of interpretative authority across cases, (2) exploring organizational responses to PTC attacks, and (3) cultivating defense and awareness strategies through cooperations with organizations under PTC attack. The contributions of the project are twofold: First, the project provides interdisciplinary contributions to the underexplored question of how established organizations respond to PTC attacks. Second, CAPTA develops transdisciplinary contributions to tackle PTC as a GSC for digital democratic societies and provides tangible defense strategies to organizations under attack.