Who will pass judgment on the information war? Saying what's true and what's not is not enough.

This war is about nothing less than our own minds. If we do not focus on this problem, we will end up shooting ourselves in the foot, the president seems to be saying.

Last week a group of MPs from the governing coalition spoke up with a similar appeal, including the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, Helena Langšádlová. The Government’s own program statement set forth the aims of supporting critical thinking and media literacy and advertised draft legislative and non-legislative measures to better facilitate protection against harmful disinformation.

I’m concerned that it’s difficult to speak of a “cucumber season” in these days of a (dis)information deluge and social media. Today and every day, new conspiracies or tendentiously distorted stories are being spun on social media about Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, chemtrails, COVID-19 and its impacts, or insistence that the Earth is flat.

The creation and dissemination of disinformation will be even easier and faster through the unexpectedly rapid rise of artificial intelligence. Finding vulnerable target groups will be aided by AI as well.

The bottom line is that disinformation today represents even more of a threat than it did when the Government put its program statement together. Although today the Government, objectively speaking, has to deal with an unprecedented number of problems, underestimating the influence of disinformation can backfire on it (and on all of Czech society).

Academia’s role in public debate

Nothing less is at risk than trust in the institutions on which our society is based. What is at stake is its cohesion, which disinformation is constantly undermining.

If we give up on maintaining cohesion/the social contract, if we just place all of our hopes only in economic revival, we may live to see the twilight of democracy. We would be far from the first post-communist country to succumb to such a scenario.

I don’t want to just lament this situation, so I’ll try to offer a possible solution. In the last few months, in the context of the draft budget, debates are being held about the (under)financing of public universities and their usefulness to society.

I am of the opinion that in the area of defending ourselves against disinformation, public universities could significantly aid the state and thereby demonstrate their necessity and purpose. This would also follow the letter of the law on universities, the introduction to which speaks, among other matters, about academia’s active role in the public discussion of ethical and societal questions, its role in cultivating cultural diversity and mutual understanding, its contribution to development at the national and regional levels, and its collaboration with different levels of local and state administration.

As I’ve already mentioned, I comprehend how busy the Government is these days, when one crisis is replacing another. However, it may even be because of such over-extension that the time has come for the Government to turn to the centers for education into which the state is investing.

The capacities of Czech universities

Universities are able to offer an expert, neutral, trustworthy platform that could protect society from disinformation not just through their own instruction and research, but also by co-participating in designing public policy. At the same time, they could aid with coordinating efforts in this field which frequently are fragmented (and numerous).

Academia could dispel the concerns about freedom of speech and politicization which still predominate in some quarters in the context of defending ourselves against disinformation. Who else could guarantee the apolitical nature of such attempts?

After all, this is not primarily about saying what’s true and what’s not. The aim is to develop abilities and mechanisms which will aid us with differentiating reliable information from tendentiously distorted or deceptive allegations and with discerning reliable sources of information.

University laboratories for the study of disinformation are commonplace in some countries. Why not go down that road here in the Czech Republic?

I am convinced that some Czech universities already have the expert capacity and willingness to head in that direction. What does the Government think of this idea?