political scientist • PhD Leiden, MPhil Oxford, formerly on the frontlines of EU public diplomacy 💬 security, technology, democracy 🔎 misinformation
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Joined June 2015
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Misinformation, disinformation, fake news, propaganda, algorithmic amplification, influence operations, bots, AI bias,… 😵💫
How to deal with what looks like information chaos?
What is at stake for Europe?
👉🏼 A few takeaways from my PhD thesis: universiteitleiden.nl/en/new…
"Democratic resilience" has become the EU's favourite buzzword. It shows up in every strategy document and conference agenda, but almost never comes with a shared definition, a common metric, or any way to know if what we're doing actually contributes to it.
China and the US have been recurring subjects of discussion in this year’s #AthensForum.
Xiaoyu Lu from @PKU1898 says “interestingly, the more they talk to each other, the more they understand each other, the more they are hostile towards each other”
@DemCultureFnd
“Sadly it’s cheaper to send a drone than to send an Ambassador these days” — a statement that perfectly summarises the failure of #diplomacy in the Middle East during this morning’s panel on Iran at #AthensForum with @DemCultureFnd and @nytimes.
What a powerful message from Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Founder of Women Journalists Without Chains:
“the real threat to #democracy isn’t authoritarianism but the people who remain silent when democracy is attacked”
#AthensForum
@DemCultureFnd @NobelPrize
I took away three lessons from my evening at the beautiful Academy of Athens with @ForumAthens:
(1) know the rules so you can break them.
(2) democracy needs creative builders to reimagine its practice.
(3) technology enables us to have a god-like impact on society.
After today’s discussions @ForumAthens on the role of the state for democracy, I wondered: why not putting more focus on #citizens capacity instead?
The core challenges democracies are facing mainly affect society, not institutions.
We continue #AthensForum by @DemCultureFnd x @nytimes with a discussion on “legitimacy, state transformation and the democratic social contract” with Pedro Abramovay (@OpenSociety) asking: what is the architecture we need to foster #solidarity and #hope?
Kicking off the 2026 @ForumAthens by @DemCultureFnd & @nytimes with stimulating remarks on the disconnect between politics and the public.
“It’s not about truth, it’s about trust” says Jerzy Pomianowski from @EEDemocracy.
#AthensForum
In her #SOTEU speech, @vonderleyen announced a new Congress of Europe with "the greatest thinkers and writers, artists and scientists, citizens and civil society" convened to reclaim "our European imagination."
Would convening the brightest minds of Europe really move the needle in this battle? I doubt it. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I believe in rebuilding the channels through which ordinary people can take part in the imagination of Europe. This is how we relate to each other.
And it is the work we’re leading at the @globalsocietyHQ.
Read our first white paper to learn more: globalsocietyfoundation.org
I wrote my PhD thesis on how states construct and manage information environments, and who benefits from controlling them.
When I heard that a so-called “information market” @Polymarket running on @Polygon was labelled a “truth machine”, I knew I had to dive deeper.
I never thought my love of techno and my work in democratic theory would end up in the same essay.
Then, an Italian mayor named Silvia Salis organised a rave and emerged as Meloni's biggest contender.
My latest piece on EDM culture, agonistic spaces, and why the dance floor might be more politically relevant than parliament right now: sophiepomme.com/silvia-salis…
Sophie L. Vériter retweeted
Foreign Ministers of Ireland, Slovenia and Spain, have written to HRVP @kajakallas on the urgent situation in the Middle East.
Read full letter here: gov.ie/en/department-of-fore…
An underreported skill in politics: using international legitimacy to bury a domestic crisis.
Sánchez this week is a textbook case of narrative displacement. Don’t rebut a damaging frame, change the arena where the questions get asked.
