Contemporary democracies are threatened not only by abrupt institutional ruptures, but by a deeper transformation of the communication environment that gradually erodes the conditions of their functioning and contributes to democratic backsliding. The unprecedented expansion of the digital public sphere has multiplied both the actors who take the floor and the volume of content in circulation; yet this informational abundance is accompanied by a growing difficulty for citizens to orient themselves amid content overload and to distinguish reliable information from manipulation. In this setting, the algorithmic logics of platforms tend to reward and amplify the most aggressive, uncivil and polarizing content, and to favour the circulation of mis- and disinformation, with consequences for the quality of public discourse, institutional trust and the perceived legitimacy of democratic contestation.
In this configuration of contemporary communication – more open and participatory, but at the same time more exposed to the amplification of conflict and to information disorder – the vulnerability of democracies increases. Political incivility, affective polarization, disinformation, hate speech, and the delegitimation of opponents and oversight institutions, usually studied in isolation, increasingly appear as interwoven dimensions of a broader condition of democratic vulnerability, one that becomes especially visible at moments of heightened salience: electoral campaigns, crises, and high-intensity media events. These dynamics unfold across online and offline arenas alike, and they represent a shared challenge for European democracies.
The panel takes the notion of democratic vulnerability as an analytical frame capable of holding these processes together and asks under which conditions the ongoing transformation of the communication ecosystem weakens or, conversely, strengthens democratic resilience. It welcomes theoretical, empirical, comparative or single-case contributions.
Contributions are welcome on, among others, the following areas:
political incivility – its strategic use by political actors, the forms it assumes in public debate, and the ways citizens perceive it;
affective and political polarization;
the production and countering of disinformation;
the role of platforms and algorithmic mediation;
the transformations of journalism and news consumption;
communication, media systems and democratic resilience, ideally though not necessarily in comparative European perspective.