Our Priorities
At the Democracy Story Unit we are focused on three intersecting forces that are exacerbating democratic backsliding and undermining human rights globally. These are Big Tech, the Anti-Gender Movement and Authoritarianism.
These three priorities emerged from our inaugural Democracy Story Labs in London 2023 and Rio in 2024, where we gathered storytellers, journalists, broadcasters, social scientists, technologists and academics together to examine the relationship between the condition of our information ecosystem and the health of our democracies and levels of civic engagement. To identify trends and share learnings across regions, build intersectional dialogue so that we could create a broader coalition of allies who are invested in contributing to a more healthy information ecosystem for all.
These multi-disciplinary think-ins contributed to our strategy for the future direction of the Democracy Story Unit and we produced a report synthesising these conversations. Download and read the report here.
“How we think about information ecosystems in the 21st century will be decisive in terms of the outcomes that we see, not just on climate, but on every social issue around immigration, around human rights, women's rights, around identity. All of these issues are shaped by society's ability to have a conversation. That space is where society thinks, and if it is completely polluted ..and driven towards the extremes, society becomes incapable of collective thought. And incapable of collective outcomes at a time when we need them more than we ever have.”
Tom Brookes
Global Strategic Communications Council
We are staging a number of interventions within each priority area, leaning into Doc Society’s areas of expertise, including: film and impact funding, learning and analysis on narrative & cultural strategy, experiments in impact and distribution infrastructure.
Why focus on Big Tech? The aggregation of power and capital and a lack of regulation are coalescing to create a broad based cultural and political realignment around the world. Tech giants—including but not limited to Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Tencent—now wield more power over our economies, politics, and daily lives than Big Oil or Big Banks did in their time. Their influence extends from AI-driven disinformation to increasing alignment with far-right movements. Yet, public narratives about Big Tech have largely been shaped by these corporations themselves. To challenge this, we need a strong narrative strategy that highlights the real-world impact of these companies on communities and democracy.
The Big Tech Narrative Initiative is a multi-pronged cultural strategy initiative that seeks to harness the power of non-fiction storytelling, building and supporting a cohort of projects tackling issue areas connected to Big Tech. Together we are asking: what are the stories needed now to explore the unprecedented impact Big Tech is having on our societies?
Click here to learn more about our online convening for filmmakers, where we unpacked what Big Tech is, and how to tackle its impacts on screen via narrative storytelling.
Why focus on the AGM? Around the world we are witnessing the impacts of a new wave of resistance against gender equality and women’s and LGBTQIA rights, even in countries where cultural battles over gender and sexuality appeared to be relics of the past.
This oppositional Anti-Gender Movement is bolder, more organized, better funded and more trans-national than in previous decades. In addition to contesting progressive gender equality laws, it is advancing an alternative normative cultural frame; a framework that centres the “natural family” as the foundation of social and national cohesion, national sovereignty, and religious conservatism.
This is manifesting in new laws, showing up on the street in the repression of women’s and LGBTQIA rights activism, online in increased hate speech and also changing what narratives are visible in mainstream media.
We have been organising with peers in media, academia, amongst campaigners to share strategy, intelligence and to get coordinated. As a first intervention, click here to find out more about our Queer Now initiative - a programme to equip queer filmmakers to ask: how can we build solidarity between advocates, harness narrative strategy to protect queer communities, preserve LGBTQIA+ rights and build more liberated queer futures?
Data shows that democratic countries are now in the minority, that freedom of expression is declining, and high levels of disinformation and polarization are fueling democratic backsliding. This wave of autocratization has been ongoing for 25 years and shows no sign of slowing down.
Among the top indicators of autocratization are those relating to declining freedom of expression which is deteriorating in 44 countries in 2024, a quarter of all countries in the world. There is now a well worn playbook, where the first move is often to shut down public media and quash independent journalism. The question is, how does the cultural sector respond; how do we collectively slow, or trouble the drift towards authoritarianism?
There are multiple strategies available to us. Doc Society, as a curator and funder, can help shine a light on authoritarian movements so we can truly know them. But we must also lift up narratives that address the root causes of discontent and fracture as well as stories of hope and visions of different futures.
The Democracy Unit has a new filmmaking and impact fund dedicated to cinematic non fiction storytelling. Click through to find out more about the stories we’re looking for.
Beyond individual narratives, we are focused on the material structures that underpin independent media, including funding and distribution systems. It is a priority across the DSU to pilot interventions that might improve citizens’ access to a plurality of information, art and ideas across multiple platforms and in their own communities.
More updates and opportunities for collaboration to follow.
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