ANTIGONE

Acronym: ANTIGONE
Title: ANTagonIsm to aGOnism iN digital Ecosystems

What is the ANTIGONE project about, and which societal or democratic challenge does it seek to address?
Inspired by Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, the project explores conflicts between competing systems of legitimacy, recognition, and democratic voice. ANTIGONE delves into how online platforms can be institutionally and technologically designed to host conflict constructively: to distinguish between harmful disinformation and necessary disagreement, between symbolic exclusion and productive contestation.

    “Antigone rethinks the core democratic tension between freedom of expression and disinformation control not as a clash between truth and falsehood, or regulation and rights, but as a question of how disagreement itself is institutionally and technologically hosted.”
     Trisha Meyer

Currently, governments and online platforms often face a difficult choice: how to balance the right to free expression with the need to curb disinformation. Across Europe and North America, prominent critics have weaponized the concept of “free speech,” portraying counter-disinformation efforts as covert censorship. This has fueled legal and political battles in the US and pressure on EU regulators to weaken the Digital Services Act. These developments underscore the urgent need to define the boundaries of legitimate dissent and distinguish harmful manipulation from democratic debate.
At the same time, democracies face growing challenges from online information manipulation, polarization, and declining trust in institutions. As platforms scale back moderation and debates over free speech intensify, initiatives such as the Digital Services Act have become increasingly contested. ANTIGONE responds to these tensions by examining how democratic societies can distinguish harmful manipulation from legitimate disagreement, while safeguarding both freedom of expression and democratic participation.

ANTIGONE addresses these challenges by shifting the focus from content control to the institutional and technological conditions that govern online expression. It brings together academic researchers, media integrity, AI & data scientists, and journalists to explore a central hypothesis: antagonism in online discourse often stems not from extreme views alone, but from a misalignment between political expression and the institutional or technical conditions.
 

What are the main outcomes or contributions that ANTIGONE aims to achieve through its research and activities?
ANTIGONE aims to create three interlinked conceptual innovations:

• Institutional and technological conditions of speech, exploring how rules, platforms, and infrastructures shape (and sometimes limit) mutual recognition in communication.
• Narrative drift, tracking how stories change as they move across platforms, audiences, and ideological spaces, often challenging existing regulatory categories,
• Agonistic digital ecosystems, a framework for understanding when and how disagreement in digital spaces can remain visible, accountable, and productive rather than harmful or unproductive.

Additionally, the project will create methodological and technological innovations with proof-of-concept interventions:

• Comprehensive disinformation archive and documentation standards, integrating insights from data scientists, legal and journalistic practice to support contestable and transparent moderation outcomes; 

• AI-Human OSINT web-based tools and plug-ins that foster agonistic digital ecosystems by signaling antagonistic discourse and information manipulation across content formats and platforms; 

• Experimental participatory governance formats to foster agonistic speech, co-created with social media influencers, journalists and fact-checkers to enhance interpretability and symbolic inclusion in online debate; 

• Legal redress protocols to counter illegal and harmful speech, developed in collaboration with legal experts and rights defense organizations. 

"By bringing together researchers, policymakers, media professionals and civil society, we aim to create more resilient digital ecosystems where harmful manipulation can be addressed without undermining legitimate democratic disagreement."
 Basak Uslu

What role does VUB play in the consortium and which expertise does it contribute to the project?
VUB, as the project coordinator, leads the project and oversees the establishment, coordination and monitoring of the project’s governance structure. VUB provides overall scientific, managerial, and financial leadership through its Centre for Digitalisation, Democracy and Innovation (CD2I) at the Brussels School of Governance. Prof. Trisha Meyer (PI), with her team, leads Project Management work package and liaises with the European Commission, drawing on extensive experience in coordinating EU-funded projects and expertise in platform governance, disinformation, and participatory policymaking. Additionally, the VUB team plays multiple roles across all work packages, contributing to activities ranging from the critical analysis of speech grey zones and laying the foundations for restoring open civic discourse to the design of pluralistic and transparent online environments.

What broader impact do you expect ANTIGONE to have for society?
With the outcomes of ANTIGONE, we aim to amplify democratic resilience by empowering key actors, strengthening civic discourse, and informing EU and national digital policies. At the same time, ANTIGONE will foster multidisciplinary research on disinformation, freedom of expression, and online civic discourse through the concept of agonistic digital ecosystems, while addressing communicative misalignment and narrative drift. Building on this, the project will develop innovative AI-human OSINT and archiving tools to help monitor and counter disinformation and information manipulation across media and technology ecosystems.