Digital distrust and polarisation: 'We need to get back to engaging with one another as a society'

Home Shows Spotlight To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 06:41 Issued on: 13/10/2026 - 19:39Modified: 13/10/2026 - 19:57 From the show François Picard is pleased to welcome Valdemar Osted, partner and head of technology at Danish digital consultancy Common Consultancy. Can the fear of disinformation become as dangerous to democracy as disinformation itself? Osted challenges widely circulated claims that attacks on Russian data centres have triggered a sudden collapse in online engagement among supporters of Donald Trump and Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Drawing on social media monitoring and research into inauthentic behaviour, Osted reports finding no unusual decline in Facebook interactions following the attacks. While acknowledging the reality of Russian influence operations, and disinformation campaigns, he cautions against confusing the existence of bots with evidence of meaningful electoral influence. More fundamentally,...