Tartu, Hildesheim, and Leiden: Where new disinformation experts are made?

What do Tartu in Estonia, Hildesheim in Germany and Leiden in the Netherlands all have in common? They are all small cities with about 100.000 inhabitants. But more importantly, all three of them have universities that offer a degree related to mitigating disinformation. As more and more people are recognizing the danger of disinformation, more and more universities are creating innovative study programs focused on dealing with disinformation. Zooming in on each of these programs can help us understand why we can have hope in the fight against disinformation.

Tartu and Hildesheim

Just last year, the University of Tartu launched its new, one-year master’s program Disinformation and Societal Resilience. As the name suggests, the program not only focuses on information manipulation itself but also strategic communication and risk management to build societal resilience. Students particularly gain insights into how Estonia has developed societal resilience in the face of frequent disinformation campaigns from Russia. In this sense, the program is specifically designed for students from countries that are themselves often subject to disinformation campaigns. Citizens of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan are even specifically offered tuition waivers. Overall, the program is quite selective and only admits a total of 20 students per year.

Luckily, there are other options to study disinformation in other parts of Europe as well. The German university of Hildesheim offers Digital Social Sciences as a dedicates track of their three-year bachelor’s degree in international information management. This combination of political science, sociology, and linguistics studies disinformation from a variety of different angles and in the context of several other topics. For instance, the program considers how social media can be used to improve political communication as well as how it can be used to facilitate more political participation.

Leiden and Beyond

The minor Disinformation and Strategic Communication in Global Media at Leiden University in the Netherlands uses a similar interdisciplinary approach. As a minor, this program consists of five courses, three of which focus on disinformation, journalism, and media in a global context. In addition, students get to choose a fourth course on disinformation in either Europe or the U.S. and a fifth course on disinformation in either Russia or China. All of these courses focus on theoretical issues, such as how different media messages are disseminated globally or how transnational and regional types of disinformation are connected. At the same time, the courses also expose students to practical issues, such as strategies on how to verify news items.

Each of these programs is unique in how it studies disinformation. Some have a strong practical focus in terms of achieving societal resilience, others a more interdisciplinary approach. Some are focused on very specific regions of the world; others have a more integrated approach. Apart from the three examples listed here, there are also several degree programs that focus more on strategic communication and on other aspects related to curbing disinformation, for instance in Sweden, Lithuania, Portugal, and England.

Many programs – three lessons

Despite this wide variety of programs, three things stand out: First, most of the study programs dealing with disinformation are relatively new, indicating how the increased societal relevance of disinformation is slowly starting to manifest itself in university degrees. Second, as already mentioned, the programs are quite different from each other. This can be attributed to the fact that the issue of disinformation is quite complex and can be addressed from many different perspectives. But this variety also demonstrates the different geopolitical contexts that European countries find themselves in.

Lastly, this variety of programs also offers reason for hope. As Russia and other states continue to launch disinformation campaigns, as they tirelessly attempt to polarize societies and to influence democratic elections, more and more universities are recognizing disinformation as a danger. These universities are fast in adapting to new geopolitical and technological challenges, quickly developing degrees in studying disinformation and educating the next generation of disinformation experts. Through their teaching and research, they are also fostering greater societal awareness and preparedness for the issue. The greater the variety of programs, the more ways societies will have to address disinformation in the future. Therefore, Tartu, Hildesheim, and Leiden will hopefully not be the last universities to create a degree related to understanding and mitigating disinformation.