Date: 18 December 2023
Time: 13:00-14:00 CET
Location: Online event
For the EDMO BELUX Lunch Lecture that took place on 18 December at 13:00-14:00 CET, we were delighted to welcome as our guest speakers Kamil Bernaerts, a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and University of Warwick. His PhD focuses on the relation between different forms of polarisation and democracy. Specifically, he is interested in exploring the “boundary” between harmless and harmful forms of polarisation.
All over the world, democracies are affected by polarisation. Nevertheless, remarkable differences between countries exist. Scandinavian countries, for example, do much better than France, the UK, or the US. A large-scale comparative study by VUB-researchers Kamil Bernaerts, Benjamin Blanckaert and Didier Caluwaerts attributes some part of that variation between countries to their political institutions. The message of this presentation was therefore hopeful: within the right institutional conditions, democracies can successfully curtail polarisation.
Watch the recording here!
The EDMO BELUX Lunch Lectures are a series of informal gatherings on research topics such as disinformation, hate speech, polarisation, and digitalisation. During each Lunch Lecture, a guest speaker presents their work in a 30-minute talk, after which we open the floor for discussion. Lunch Lectures take place online and can be joined by everyone who is interested and who has registered beforehand.
The previous webinars in the series of Lunch Lectures:
- 6 March 2023: ‘Measuring and defining informational vulnerability: a proposal at the intersection of psychology, political science and media studies’ with Grégoire Lits, assistant professor in media sociology at the UCLouvain School of Communication and Journalism
- 17 April 2023: ‘To the front line with OSINT’ with Brecht Castel, an independent journalist and an expert in Open Source Intelligence
- 6 May 2023: ‘Truth or trust?’ with Eline Severs, assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
- 4 September 2023: Facebook Hustles with Guillaume Kuster, CEO and co-founder of Check First
- 14 September 2023: How scientists can cope with negativity on social media with Bert Pieters, Mediawijs
- 23 October 2023: Disinformation in Belgium and Luxembourg: from exposure to belief with Jonas Lefevere, M²P research group (UA) and Brussels School of Governance (VUB)
Don’t miss out on the future editions – follow EDMO BELUX on Twitter and LinkedIn!