The speaker 

Peter Pomerantsev is a Soviet-born British journalist, author and TV producer. He is a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the Arena Initiative, an innovative programme dedicated to overcoming the challenges of disinformation and polarisation.

Born in Kyiv, Pomerantsev grew up in the UK and authored several books about propaganda by Russia and other authoritarian states. The third of these books, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, was published in March 2024. This piece Pomerantsev wrote for the Guardian is a good primer on the book. 

The video 

Seven takeaways from the talk and the discussion 

1. Satire’s role in undermining extremist ideologies is limited. “Satire is very aggressive. Satire attacks the leader, and satire attacks the follower. So satire is very good at defeating fear,” Pomerantsev said, such as in a context where people are trying to stand up to a dictator, and using satire to make this leader appear smaller. “But if you want to intervene in the relationship between a leader and his followers, telling the followers they're morons is not a good approach.”

2. Transparency on social media is key ahead of elections. Pomerantsev highlighted transparency from social media companies as crucial in the upcoming European Parliament elections. “How do we apply elements of democratic norms in what is a very complicated space, and always come back to, what are my rights as a citizen under freedom of expression? Because they use freedom of expression or non-liability as their defence. But I should have the right to understand who is manipulating me and how: why is the algorithm showing me one thing and not another? Who is behind the campaigns that I see, and how much have they spent? Are they showing the same content to somebody else?” he asked.

3. Russia exploits existing divisions to manipulate public opinion. Russia’s influence operations in the West often target existing divisions around polarising subjects such as the war in Gaza by playing both sides to exacerbate conflicts. “If you're Russia, or you're just looking at the quite understandable tensions around the war in Gaza, it's a field day for exacerbating things in the way that you want,” Pomerantsev said.

4. There are concerns about AI use in disinformation, but sometimes the most effective campaigns use basic technology. Pomerantsev spoke about the concerns around the potential of AI to speed up disinformation campaigns by using new technology instead of manual click farms or similar methods. However, he also pointed out that some successful influence campaigns, such as the Russian hack to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails in the 2016 presidential election, used ‘old-school’ techniques. “The technology is always evolving. All sides have access to the technology. It's not really about the technology. It's about the plan and it's about understanding the vulnerabilities of the ecosystem,” he said.

5. When identity becomes the prevalent factor in politics, we reach a state where facts don’t matter to people. To reverse this requires intervening in the relationship between individuals and their leader to restore critical thinking and fact-based decision-making, Pomerantsev said. Explaining 20th-century historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt’s theory, he said: “In these kinds of environments, facts don't matter anymore. It's all about identity. It's all about your relationships, the leading marker is who you are, it's not an evidence-driven debate.”

6. Building community is key for information to have an impact. Just publishing stories without community-building is not an effective way to do journalism in today’s context, Pomerantsev said. “Let us not think that simply preaching or simply spinning the truth out there and hoping it lands is enough. Let us understand the extent to which people yearn for community: being understood and being listened to, which sounds very easy to say. But go do that in a way that then doesn't compromise your journalistic ethics,” he said.

7. Journalists should think critically about their role in democracy. In an environment where simply getting the information out into the public space often doesn’t lead to change, journalists should question what their role is.“We need to have a space where we think about our role in the design of the public sphere and the design of tech platforms. If that is the fundamental issue that is undermining the theory of democracy and the role of information within it, what is our role in that debate as well? Should we be taking money from tech companies?” Pomerantsev asked.

The bottom line

Today’s information and political landscape requires a re-evaluation of journalism’s role and impact on democracy. While increasing polarisation and the growing importance of identity over facts challenge traditional journalistic assumptions, we should adjust the way we do things, focusing on building communities, while still adhering to journalistic ethics.

If you want to know more: 

• Explore this project from our Journalist Fellow Olga Tokariuk on Ukraine's comedy arsenal against Russian disinformation.
• Read this piece by Gretel Kahn on how Russian disinformation is flourishing in Latin America despite Western bans.
• Read this project from our Journalist Fellow Regine Cabato on navigating malign influence campaigns in the Philippines.