The Need for Information Sovereignty

This Is How COVID-19 Might Reinforce the Media

9 April 2020

Wojciech Przybylski

Editor-in-Chief

As the world braces itself for the rapidly descending economic hit to come, a review and reinforcement of media structures cannot be overlooked. Only resilient business models and a healthy public sphere will maintain information sovereignty for democracies.

In the first three weeks of the COVID19 pandemic, there was a massive inflation of narratives, later identified as of Russian or of Chinese origin, that preyed on the initial confusion and fear in democratic societies.

These narratives were neither innovative nor elaborative. It was the old rusty talk about an inept democratic West and the might of autocratic efficiency in the East. This talk was multiplied by the usual suspects, disappearing day-old websites, WhatsApp groups that have mushroomed here are there and the ever-predictable Russia Today (RT), Sputnik and the like.

Unfortunately, there were also powerful voices of dissent initiated, from within the West, that led to such narratives.

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Wojciech Przybylski

Editor-in-Chief

Wojciech Przybylski is leading strategic foresight on EU affairs to improve democratic security of Poland in Europe. He organises EuropeFuture.Forum as the Editor of Visegrad Insight and the President of Res Publica Foundation. An advisory board member at LSE IDEAS Ratiu Forum, European Forum of New Ideas. A guest lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute for the U.S. Government, Warsaw University and CEU Democracy Institute. He co-authored among others a book 'Understanding Central Europe’, (Routledge 2017), and 'On the Edge. Poland' (Culturescapes 2019), 'Let's Agree on Poland' (Oxford University Press, 2025) and was widely published in the international press.

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