In recent years, disinformation and misinformation have become the dark realities of our increasingly connected and technologically advanced world. During the Covid-19, disinformation reached new heights with an avalanche of false information, distorted facts and crude conspiracy theories about the virus. Today, we increasingly talk of an ‘infodemic’, a term first coined in 2003 during the SARS outbreak to describe the story of both the viral and the information epidemics.

Malign disinformation campaigns emanating in particular from Russia, Iran and China have attempted to blame the West for the coronavirus outbreak in recent months and have accused it of being unable to tackle the crisis. Their narratives look increasingly similar, with disinformation stories attempting to instrumentalise the health crisis and undermine public trust in democratic countries.

This media expert panel will take stock of the post-Corona media landscape, analyse the impact of Covid-19 infodemics on democracy and try to establish how to combat this phenomenon.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected not only the socio-economic aspect of people’s lives, but it also had a strong impact on political life around the world. Over the last months we observe negative tendencies of decrease in civil liberties and power concentration in political leaders under the pretext of measures against the propagation of the virus.

The following session will explore the implications of the crisis on political parties and the mechanisms they put in place to fight against undemocratic measures, aimed at silencing opposition actors. It would further explore the challenges linked to elections and the impact on internal party democracy processes.

Is the crisis only a burden for the executive power or was there a constructive engagement from opposition parties? Did parliaments experience cuts in their powers as a result of the crisis? How has the pandemic influenced the work with sister parties in partner countries? Have political leaders used the restrictive measures against the pandemic as pretext to silence opposition parties?