#WEASA2021: Day 4

Even more intense day!

Today in the morning session we had an excellent engaging session by Nad’a Kovalčíková (also her Twitter account) Program Manager and Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy in The German Marshall Fund of the United States and WEASA Program designer Łukasz Krol initiated a very engaging online board with giving the participants to express their opinion over building democratic resilience. Another exercise was about to think over of what is more crucial: to fight against the external marginal groups or external ones.

The most engaging part was already in the break out groups where we were discussing

1: Why is building resilience important to protect democracy?

2: What types of authoritarian interference have you noted in your countries or elsewhere?

3: How could we best address authoritarian interference in democracies?

4: What types of measures have been used in your countries to strengthen democratic resilience? (Write a country in parentheses)

In the end the groups presented their deep insights about the topics and their determination of continuing their endeavours to build and improve democratic resilience against authoritarian interference!

The second session was already devoted to the Russian disinformation and presentation of the extended research of Nina Jankowicz working at Wilson Center. One of the most engaging sessions with loads of questions of how to escape disinformation, how to fight more against cheap fake news rather than deep fake news, as they occur and can rapidly change the attitude of people in a fast manner.

The second part of the session was again in break-out sessions where we had to make a plan for an fictional minority politician, about whom there is an organised fake news campaign! It was astonishing to see great strategies. And as Nina remarked, with these strategies we could have a gorgeous anti fake news campaign everywhere!

And of course, the final bold accord of the day is the “WEASA town” gathering in gather town online platform where we exchanged so various topics about our names, about our travel adventures, covid experience and how to gather here once more.

Super good end of the day!

Tomorrow will be even better!

Cheers,

WEASA Team