How influencer and AI threaten democracies – Prof. Dr Václav Štětka appointed Professor of Digital Political Communication

Prof. Štětka, what connects you to Viadrina, and why did you decide to accept the professorship at ENS?

What attracted me to this place are a few factors: This is a young and quite ambitious institution that I feel I can contribute to a lot and I can be part of the process of evolving and shaping the development of Viadrina. It is an institution that has an interesting vision as a place that wants to build bridges between the East and the West. I feel like I can be part of this, given my own background and intellectual and scholarly history and research interests. For the most part of my academic life and research history, I have been studying Central and Eastern Europe. I feel like this position is really something that connects with my own vision and research program and a place where I can see these ambitions fulfilled.

You have investigated digital political communication for many years. What exactly interests you about this field? 

In my research, I explore the relationship between the changing information environment and the rise of populism and illiberalism, and the democratic erosion. I focus specifically on the region of Central and Eastern Europe, which has experienced a lot of democratic backsliding at least in the last decade. Media and communication technologies have been an important part of this process, both as enablers of these illiberal tendencies, but also as channels of resistance against them. In my research program here at the Viadrina, I want to further expand on this direction of research, focusing more specifically on digital platforms and the alternative online ecosystem, has been enabling and supporting these illiberal tendencies in Central and Eastern Europe, but also beyond.

What exactly are you looking at? 

I am talking especially about the rise and impact of different kinds of online influencers, such as digital celebrities, YouTubers or streamers, many of whom have been actively promoting far-right or illiberal ideas. Many of these figures are not traditional political actors, but they have been increasingly incorporated into broader illiberal networks and narratives that we are seeing across Europe. 

I am also interested in how emerging technologies, especially AI, are feeding into this ecosystem. We have already seen waves of AI-driven misinformation and manipulation in recent election campaigns, and I think it is very likely that these dynamics will intensify in the near future. Understanding how platforms, influencer cultures and AI intersect is therefore crucial to understanding contemporary illiberal politics. 

Is there enough attention being paid to this threat to democratic structures? 

There might be some awareness, but there are very few ideas regarding what to do about it, how to actually prevent these very malign or dangerous ways of utilizing AI in political process or political system. We are still trying to learn how best to regulate the whole field of AI technologies and how to ensure that it serves democracy rather than threatens it.

Can the so-called West learn something from the experiences of Central and Eastern Europe? 

It is a bit of a paradox. For several decades people in Central and Eastern Europe have always been told to learn from Western democracies. Now we are in times when Western established democracies are actually starting to experience some tendencies which have been observed in Central and Eastern Europe for a prolonged period of time in terms of democratic decline or erosion and backsliding. I think one of the lessons that can be learned is how quickly democracy can crumble. And that once the decline reaches a certain point, it is very difficult to reverse the process. We see it, for example, in Hungary, which today is not a democracy anymore, but rather a hybrid regime. Democratic institutions have been compromised and eroded to a point that it is hard to even believe that they can be re-established. We must learn that democratic institutions cannot be taken for granted; they need to be actively protected and supported, even though they might seem to be healthy on the surface.

What does this mean for political communication?

Public service media are the first ones that are targeted by illiberal governments or actors who assume power in these countries. And once independent public service broadcasting is gone, it is easier for those actors to capture other parts of the media system as well. So another lessons from Central and Eastern Europe, I guess, is to protect the independence of public service media.