RADAR

Acronym: RADAR
Title: ReclAiming Democracy Advancing Rights

What is the RADAR project about and what challenge does it aim to address?
RADAR is an interdisciplinary research project with case studies across seven countries, namely Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. It brings together political science, law, sociology, history, education, and media studies to understand how autocratic tendencies actually take root; both as sudden shocks and as slower, long-term pressures on democratic systems. It aims to diagnose strategies and symptoms of authoritarianist behaviours in different settings with action-oriented approaches. 
 

What are the key outcomes or innovations RADAR hopes to achieve?
The aim of the project is to provide trust, accountability and resilience in democratic systems through different outputs that strengthen the capacities of policymakers, academics and citizens. Amongst others, an AI detection tool will be develop to flag harmful authoritarian content with also a practical toolkit to counter disinformation. 

Which expertise will VUB bring to the table in this consortium?
The expertise of the VUB is found in the field of citizen science and impact assessment. Firstly, we will organize a citizen science panel around the topic of science denial and specifically on the narratives, attitudes and 
Trust perceptions to understand the mechanisms in which science denial and science skepticism emerge. Secondly, we conduct an impact assessment of the whole project itself by reviewing and monitoring its influence on policy and practice throughout the project and provide an impact brief for each individual country. 

What broader societal impact will RADAR have?
As European democratic systems are constantly threatened by anti-democratic actors, RADAR aims to empower European societies by providing tools which are based on real life examples and tools that are based on practices and experience within autocratic systems. RADAR examines how democracies have fought back against autocratic forces and creates messages and strategies of resistance and will have field-tested these before creating a RADAR Resilience Book.