Call for participants: RAN Communications and Narratives meeting on Conspiracy Narratives: current state and future expectations for P/CVE in Europe

This is an online meeting that will take place on 16 November and 17 November (both afternoon) 2021

For the RAN C&N Working Group meeting on ‘Conspiracy Narratives: current state and future expectations for P/CVE in Europe’ we are looking for first-line practitioners, communications experts and academics who are familiar or have experience with the topic of conspiracy narratives in Europe.

As one of the goals of the meeting is to give an overview of conspiracy narratives in the entire EU, we want to especially encourage people from Southern and Eastern EU Member States to reply to this call.

Topic of meeting

The meeting aims to give an overview of the current state of affairs regarding conspiracy narratives in different EU countries, exploring the most present conspiracy narratives and their effects. Moreover, the meeting will look into the future and explore the role of conspiracy narratives in P/CVE post-COVID-19, and how first-line practitioners can handle/tackle this.

The meeting builds on the outcomes of the previous RAN meetings and papers on this topic:

• RAN small-scale expert meeting on ‘Harmful conspiracy myths and effective P/CVE countermeasures’ (September 2020),
• C&N meeting on ‘The Impact of Conspiracy Narratives on Violent RWE and LWE Narratives’ (November 2020),
• RAN Webinar on ‘Conspiracy myths and violent extremism’ (December 2021),
• Special paper on ‘Conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism – Insights and recommendations for P/CVE, 2021’ (2021).

Questions that will be discussed during the meeting include but are not limited to: what are the most prevalent conspiracy narratives throughout Europe, and why? What lasting effect will the COVID-19 pandemic have on the presence of conspiracy narratives in mainstream (social) media? And what does this mean for first-line practitioners and P/CVE work?

Call for participants

If you are interested in participating in this meeting, please answer the questions in this form.

If you are interested in speaking at the event, or leading a break-out session, please do indicate this in the final questions of the form.

Deadline

Please fill in the form before Friday 8 October. We will invite participants (and contributors) based on the answers given in the survey.

Please keep in mind that we can only invite a limited number of participants to this meeting to ensure valuable exchange and interaction, so participation is not guaranteed.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Alwyn Voogd or Rik Scheele (RAN Staff).