Zoekresultaten

Unravelling the Web: Exploring Russian Interference targeting the EU during the 2019 European Parliament Elections

While there is extensive research on how Russian interference – in particular Russian disinformation operation – has played out in different European countries, indications of Russian interference directly targeting EU, its institutions or policies received little attention. This paper argues why there is good reason to assume that the EU, its institutions and its policies are an ideal a target for authoritarian regimes to exploit. It then explores in what ways, if any, Russian disinformation campaigning targeted EU institutions and their policies during the political and electoral campaigns leading up to the European Parliament (EP) elections of May 2019. In this context disinformation campaigning in terms of both network flows and contents (‘narratives’) have been examined, on the basis of a review of various reports identifying Russian interference and disinformation and of analyses of overall disinformation flows in Europe and the use of a database monitoring occurrences of disinformation.

Envisioning the futures of cultural tourism

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the future of tourism is a much-debated topic both in academic and non-academic circles with commentators expounding contrasting perspectives. This conceptual paper contributes to such debates and aims at envisioning plausible futures of cultural tourism, in particular. For that purpose, we first discuss cultural tourism trends and the future scenarios available in the literature. Then, we articulate three cultural tourism visions of the decades to come: a utopian, a dystopian and a heterotopian vision. Finally, we conclude that the heterotopian vision provides the most nuanced interpretation of the future of cultural tourism and we discuss the potential ramifications of such a vision.

Two digits: digital materials against dystopias of replacement and utopias of participation