Tackling Conspiracy Theories by Fostering Resilience and Political Self-Efficacy in Democracies

Liberal and constitutional democracies in Europe are currently under massive pressure from authoritarian populism, culture wars and identity conflicts. A key issue is the erosion of trust in democratic institutions and the parallel rise in belief in conspiracy theories.

The latter undermine democratic procedures as well as citizen engagement and create harmful political identities by exploiting the inherent vulnerabilities of democracies: their openness and the ambiguity of decision-making processes.

These identities block political discourse with authoritarian narratives and hinder effective political action, threatening democracies from within.TaCT-FoRSED closes a scientific gap regarding the interrelation between democracy, identity formation and conspiracy theories.

Using existing research and collecting new data, the project plans to a) investigate the impact of conspiracy theories on the adoption of an anti-democratic group identity and, conversely, to explore concrete identity factors that strengthen or weaken resilience to conspiracy myths.

Based on the realisation that the complexity of value-pluralistic democracies is the counterpart to any simplistic, authoritarian friend-foe thinking of conspiracy beliefs, democratic identity formation processes are also seen as an opportunity to effectively combat conspiracy narratives.TaCT-FoRSED will therefore b) address its key target group of multipliers in the educational fields and develop OER that specifically promote democratic self-efficacy to foster a counter-identity to any conspiracy mentality.

These materials will be evaluated together with relevant institutions from different target groups.

The project will thus improve the legitimacy of knowledge-producing institutions and political parties by supporting democratic participation. c) The findings made by TaCT-FoRSED will result in policy recommendations for political stakeholders and educators in order to make the gained solutions widely accessible.