91原创

This paper examines the pre-election rhetoric of White Christian Nationalist pastor Dutch Sheets to assess whether and how religious prayer discourse may contribute to processes associated with stochastic violence. Focusing on 377 鈥淕iveHim15鈥� prayers published between June 8, 2023, and November 19, 2024, the study analyzes the relationship between rhetorical intensity and the blending of civic and religious narratives. Drawing on theories of extremist narrative formation, charismatic authority, moral panic, and stochastic terrorism, the paper conceptualizes Sheets鈥� prayers as potential vehicles for radicalization that fuse spiritual warfare language with contemporary political grievances.

Anti-democratic movements are surging around the world, threatening to undermine elections and replace them with oligarchy. While pro-democracy movements focus on defending elections, most people think that elections alone are inadequate. How can we renew democracy and move beyond its current limitations?

For over 5,000 years, we have built up competing waves of electoral, direct, deliberative, and participatory democracy. We are now seeing a transition, however, from waves to ecosystems. While in the past, we have built up competing waves of democracy, the next stage of democratic innovation connects different practices into balanced ecosystems.

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Spe鈥媋kers鈥嬧�� included:

鈥�Timothy Shaffer, 鈥嬧�婼NF Ithaca Director and Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Chair of Civil Discourse, Biden School of Public Policy and Administration, 91原创 (Moderator)鈥�

, 鈥嬧�婥o-Executive Director, People Powered鈥�

,听Director of Digital Participation and Network Communication, Presidency of the Republic of Brazil鈥�

,听Head of Governance, United Nations Development Programme鈥�

, Professor of Politics, Centre for the Study of Democracy in the School of Social Sciences, University of Westminster鈥�

,听Inaugural Marilyn J. Gittell Chai鈥媟 in Urban Studies at the Graduate Center, City University of New York鈥�

This white paper documents how social media, especially Meta, contributes to the decline of local journalism. It highlights the lack of financial transparency, allowing tech companies to promote their investments in local news without accountability. The paper proposes a digital advertising tax (DAT) on social media ads targeting users based on online data. The revenue would fund robust independent journalism through a non-profit consortium of local news organizations, researchers, non-profits, and funding entities.

As journalism scholar Victor Pickard notes, "the journalism crisis is a policy problem." This paper outlines a policy approach to addressing it.

This white paper details the results of a pilot study and a randomized controlled trial that investigated the possibility that engaging in a structured conversation with someone of differing political views can increase students鈥� willingness to express their views on controversial topics and improve students鈥� attitudes toward individuals who do not share their views.听

The key contentions of this white paper are: (1) that the FEC鈥檚 regulatory responsibility to distinguish between legitimate press entities and functions, on the one hand, and political influence operations on the other is an increasingly important mechanism by which the federal government can help news consumers navigate a news and information ecosystem in which identifying legitimate news sources has become much more challenging; and (2) that the FEC should employ a more precise and rigorous assessment process in making its determinations: one that leverages the broader range of analytic and digital forensic tools available to it for evaluating both whether entities merit classification as 鈥減ress entities鈥� and whether the activities in which an entity engages represent legitimate press functions.听听

This paper argues that the contemporary 鈥渕isinformation panic鈥� misdiagnoses the challenges facing democratic societies. While false and misleading information can cause harm, the dominant response鈥攆act-checking, content moderation, and algorithmic interventions鈥攔ests on the faulty 鈥渁symmetry assumption鈥� that misinformation operates differently from accurate information. In reality, belief formation follows symmetrical processes shaped by identity, partisanship, and epistemic communities. Survey design flaws, definitional drift, and selective issue focus have inflated the perceived prevalence and impact of misinformation, fueling a moral panic sustained by third-person effects and elite institutional interests. Rather than treating misinformation as a contagion to be eradicated, the paper reframes it as a symptom of deeper structural problems: epistemic polarization, institutional distrust, media fragmentation, and elite legitimation of false claims. Addressing these challenges requires moving beyond content-focused interventions toward structural reforms that build epistemic resilience, revitalize local news, strengthen democratic institutions, and realign elite incentives. By shifting attention from supply-side content fixes to the demand-side and structural conditions that foster receptivity to misleading information, this paper outlines a more effective path toward democratic resilience in an era of fragmented knowledge communities.