NTNU Community – Team Knowledge for Democracy and Citizenship
In a society marked by increasingly fragmented information and declining trust in authoritative sources, it becomes crucial to ask: How can we create shared understandings to safeguard and strengthen democracy and citizenship? The team’s goal is to explore how knowledge shapes society and can help ensure and enhance democratic preparedness and resilience, while also examining how disinformation poses threats to democratic communities and to people’s ability and willingness to engage in active and reflective citizenship.

Knowledge is essential for our ability to navigate the world. Shared knowledge can help bridge different lifeworlds, experiences, and perspectives. Thus, knowledge is more than information or facts—it shapes our judgment and critical thinking, and influences the development bot our communitues and individual identity.
Democratic preparedness and resilience involves cultivating the willingness, knowledge, and competences to respond—to step forward as acting citizens. This requires a public sphere where knowledge is shared and tested, and where disagreement does not undermine community but carries it forward. In today’s world, where the public sphere, information dissemination, and social interaction are deeply shaped by digital information technologies, this increasingly involves building digital resilience—understood as the population’s ability to withstand threats posed by emerging technologies, such as generative AI.

Politicians, media, schools, other educational institutions, the research sector, and citizens all share responsibility for maintaining and strengthening a democratic public sphere. Yet, even as this responsibility becomes more urgent, we are witnessing a global trend of democratic decline: authoritarian tendencies are gaining ground, trust in knowledge institutions is weakening, global tech companies are driving a deeper power shift, and the shared space for reflection and disagreement is shrinking.

Knowledge for Democracy and Citizenship is an interdisciplinary team consisting of members with research and teaching backgrounds in areas such as democracy studies, science and technology studies, sociology, history of knowledge, citizenship education, artificial intelligence, disinformation and conspiracy theories, archives and documentation management, among others.

Feel free to get in touch if you are interested in joining the network/team.

Some key questions include:
•    How is knowledge about society developed and disseminated?
•    What is the state of democratic knowledge, attitudes, and participation in society?
•    How is this affected by the development of new communication technologies and artificial intelligence?
•    How can society’s knowledge institutions help build democratic resilience?
•    What has laid the foundation for trust in knowledge, scientific and political institutions, and other societal pillars, and how can this trust be maintained?
•    How can we ensure democratic participation in the interplay between societal development and the evolution of new technologies and forms of communication?
•    How can we ensure transparency in political processes and safeguard freedom of expression?
•    What threats and drivers for democratic development have emerged through technological change?
•    How can we build resilience against the spread and support of disinformation and conspiracy theories?