Fake as a Challenge to Freedom: Democracy vs. Authoritarianism

• In Event: Truth, Quasi Truth, and "Pure" Fake: Russia's Ongoing War Against Ukraine

Abstract

Democracy's optimism regarding the development of new technologies has not been justified. The digital age, nurtured by the power of the human mind, has proven incapable of automatically transforming authoritarian regimes into democratic ones. Authoritarianism successfully uses the ethical neutrality of the digital world. This gives authoritarian regimes the opportunity to actualize their own resources of domination and oppression. Russia's war against Ukraine has revealed the connection between the revival of the experience of imperialism and the digital world. The combination of imperialism and the digital age makes it possible to create hybrids of unfreedom and democracy.

Author

• Olga Gomilko, National Academy of Sciences (Ukraine)