About the project
The overarching theme for the TIDAL project concerns the legal preconditions for a well-functioning democracy in an age marked by severe information disorder.
Goal
The basic aim of the project is to identify optimal regulatory strategies for reducing information disorder. This must be done while ensuring that the legal response does not unduly erode the bedrock for democracy and does not unduly impact the jurisdictional competence of other states.
Background
Information disorder has always been a problem that is difficult to combat: over 300 years ago, the famed Anglo-Irish satirist, Jonathan Swift, wryly remarked: ‘Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it’. Yet, the problem has become increasingly acute: just after climate change and large-scale environmental pollution, the UN Global Risk Report 2024 regards mis- and disinformation as the third most pressing global risk, and also the global risk for which humanity is the least prepared.
While there is much research in the social and information sciences on various aspects of information disorder, we lack precise knowledge as to what an appropriate legal-regulatory framework for combatting information disorder would look like.
