The Covid pandemic against the backdrop of post-truth politics 

Open seminar Thursday 18 March from 13:00 to 15:00 at the Nordic house   

Controversies surrounding the question of how best to tackle the ongoing Covid pandemic are a striking illustration of the challenges of post-truth politics for liberal democracies. Social and other digital media provide an infrastructure through which deliberate disinformation and conspiracy theories can spread more easily than ever before. At the same time, populist politicians have fuelled a disdain for scientific expertise and even for basic facts. In various liberal democracies, this has created political cultures in which the symbolic authority of the truth has been fundamentally undermined, accompanied by an erosion of trust in established media institutions. Yet at the same time, the pandemic has also served as a reminder of the necessity of scientific research and trust in the institutions that communicate the findings of such research.  

Here is a link to the live streaming from our event. If you wish to join us in the Nordic House, please make sure to register via this link. 

Opening remarks by Professor Maximilian Conrad, University of Iceland 

Keynote address by Professor Saul Newman, Goldsmiths, University of London 

Discussants: 
Elfa Ýr Gylfadóttir, Director of the Media Commission in Iceland 
Professor Guðmundur Hálfdánarson, University of Iceland 
Jón Gunnar Ólafsson, Post Doc, University of Iceland 

Moderator: Auður Örlygsdóttir, Project Manager, Höfði Reykjavík Peace Centre at the University of Iceland 

This workshop is part of the Jean Monnet Network Post-Truth Politics, Nationalism and the (De-)Legitimation of European Integration, led by Höfði Reykjavík Peace Centre at the University of Iceland, in collaboration with five other universities from Europe and North America. 

The workshop is organized as a hybrid event. It will thus take place both on site in the Nordic House, with a limited audience - please make sure to register - as well as online.