Project: VEGA 2/0133/22
Duration: 1 / 2022 – 12 / 2025
Principal Investigator: Elżbieta Drążkiewicz
Scientific co-workers: Robert Klobucký, Kamil Charvát

This project will explore the meanings and trajectories of conflicts over truth in the post-truth and post-Covid world. It will explore how specific political cultures of Poland and Slovakia foster or prevent conflicts over truths. The goal is to understand how conspiracy theories and the label of conspiracy theories are weaponised and increasingly used as a political technology. A comparative and qualitative approach will allow to explore how particular political cultures and historical contexts influence the ways in which specific societies differentiate between valid concerns, ‘healthy’ suspicion of power and ‘paranoid’ thinking. The goal is to explore how specific political cultures foster, endorse or prevent and counter conflicts over truth. By juxtaposing data found in the course of this project with available studies concerning Western world, the project will provide a better understanding of the common and unique features of conspiracy theories across Western and Central Eastern Europe.