ERR to livestream Tallinn forum on democracy and disinformation

ERR will livestream the 29th Open Estonia Foundation Forum in Tallinn on Thursday, where experts will discuss how democracy can recover from setbacks and withstand disinformation. The discussions begin at 1 p.m. and will be streamed on the ERR website, the public broadcaster reports. The forum will be held in English, with simultaneous interpretation into Estonian.

The forum will open with a conversation between European Parliament member Daniel Freund and Kristi Raik, director of the International Centre for Defence and Security, on the state of democracy in Europe.

The first panel, from 1:40 p.m. to 3 p.m., will examine democratic change in Central and Eastern Europe. Participants include Edit Zgut-Przybylska of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Freund, Maciej Nowicki, chair of the board of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland, and Martin Luhan, chair of the Czech non-profit Lobbio.

A second panel, from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., will consider how disinformation, artificial intelligence and digital manipulation threaten democratic debate, and how societies can strengthen their resilience. The speakers are Hungarian disinformation expert Péter Krekó, Moldovan journalist Mihail Sirkeli and Maria Murumaa-Mengel, associate professor of media studies at the University of Tartu.

Journalist Neeme Raud will moderate the forum. Mall Hellam, head of the Open Estonia Foundation, will open the event.