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Interface Demography (ID), founded in 1977, is the research unit for population studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Recent years have seen an increase in so called ‘radical politics’. Both at the left and right end of the political continuum ‘radical’ political parties have emerged and gained sustained electoral success.

While the information crisis is widely acknowledged, academic knowledge on the depth, extent and detailed manifestation of this crisis is lacking due to an evidence and research deficit.

The project starts from the observation that the news environment is polluted with disinformation that makes media harmful rather than beneficial for democracy.

From its inception in the 1920s until the 1970s, public service broadcasting was – albeit firmly rooted in a project of political power maximisation – concerned with emancipation.

The project investigates the potential of European dataspheres for integrating and fostering public values in a media context characterized by platform economies, datafication and a crisis of trust in the public sphere.

The relationship between citizens, the press and politics has dramatically changed over the past decades, from a CNN effect in the 1990s to a Youtube effect in the 2000s and, more recently, the diffusion of fake news.

While interplays between politics and media are widely acknowledged, recent scholarly attention has gone overwhelmingly to traditional non-fiction media such as documentary film, television news and journalism.

COCO welcomes project proposals in the following broad, interdisciplinary themes:

- Operationalizing and measuring compassion.

- Studying transitions towards and the sustainability of Compassionate Communities.

As a result of the corona situation, several initiatives have been set up worldwide at different levels (e.g.