Agenda
Public life is being reshaped by an information ecosystem that no longer delivers shared facts or accountable debate. Instead, societies face what Eliot Higgins calls disordered discourse—self-sustaining narratives where truth is inverted, institutions are captured, and citizens struggle to separate evidence from manipulation.
In this keynote, Higgins introduces the VDA framework—Verification, Deliberation, Accountability—as a way to re-anchor democratic practice in the post-gatekeeper era. Rather than chasing individual falsehoods, the VDA approach addresses the deeper breakdown of truth-validation and discourse itself. Drawing on case studies from open-source investigations, political disinformation, and grassroots counterpublics, he shows how societies can move back towards functional democratic discourse—and what happens when they don’t.
The VDA framework offers a roadmap for resilience: how citizens, journalists, and institutions can work together to remake public discourse on stronger, more democratic foundations.
