(foreign) agents, changes of publishing model, and technological trends such as AI and social media. When looking at the drivers of truth decay, we find the biggest difference between the two regions are in the education system and polarisation. First, we conclude that most education systems in Europe are better utilised to prepare their students to address the challenges related to truth decay.


“With regard to polarisation, we found evidence that this phenomenon is deeper and happening faster in the US across all dimensions we analysed: economic, racial, religious, ideological and political. It’s not a surprise that political polarisation is much stronger in the US than in most parts of Europe. We have measured this by analysing election results across Europe and plac- ing political parties on a left-right scale. On this scale the Republicans have moved to the right and democrats to the left. Whilst in Europe, we see some evi- dence of a hollowing out of the centrist parties, by no means is this as strong as it is in the US. The recent European elections reinforced these findings.”


Polarisation prevention system He said polarisation was usually meas- ured using population surveys asking about political affinity and respond- ent’s opinions about supporters of the opposition: “Again, partisanship in the United States has deepened over the past decades, strengthening a feeling of ‘us versus them’, whereas the trend in most European countries has gone in the opposite direction. There are various potential explanations for these differences between Europe and the US. First, compared to the first-past-the- post district system in the US, the direct representation electoral systems and multi-party systems in most of Europe require coalition formation and dialogue between political parties, which can have a mitigating effect on polarisation. The highly politicised media landscape and tradition in the US may further exacerbate these effects.”


Is the UK worse than the rest of Europe?


The report highlighted some localised problems, like the effect of Brexit in the UK, but Stijn says: “Unfortunately, we did not conduct a systematic com- parison between individual European countries, although this would be a very interesting exercise. So, it is hard to say one country is more at risk than the other. Our report mentions discrep- ancies in public perception of benefit fraud and teenage pregnancy from a study (Hopkin and Rosamund) looking at public perceptions of phenomena


June 2024 Stijn Hoorens.


compared to their official statistics. Brit- ish people believed that £24 per £100 of welfare benefits are claimed fraudulently, while in fact this was only £0.70 in reality. And there are other indications that there is an increasing disagreement about facts and evidence in the UK.


“These differences may, in part, be explained by news consumption and the journalistic tradition in the UK, which follows a more liberal model that is more akin to the US than to the rest of Europe. This model is rooted in a fact-centred tradition, but it is also increasingly entertainment-oriented, due to increased commercial pressures and competition from other media. In this model, with its prominent tabloid press, entertainment and left-right preferences may prevail for people when deciding what news outlets to use. And indeed, when you look at measures of news audience polarisation, the UK ranks among several eastern and southern European countries rather than west-European countries.”


Essential libraries


Asked if libraries play a role he says: “Definitely, libraries are an essential part of the solution to stop the trend of an eroding role for facts and evidence in society.” Stijn points to a number of ways in which this can happen:


l libraries have a crucial role in ensuring that people have access to objective facts


and evidence, whether it is academic research or objective news reporting. Moreover, they are indispensable in ensuring that this access extends into perpetuity;


l secondly, libraries are important knowledge brokers. In a world with an unprecedented and still increasing pace and volume of information, the media landscape has become inundated with content from millions of sources. Libraries have an important role in helping citizens to see the wood from the trees, for instance by distinguishing fact from opinion;


l and do not underestimate the poten- tial importance of physical libraries as locations where people can get out of their bubble and encounter people with different sets of beliefs, opinions or backgrounds. A healthy democracy is helped by an open exchange of views;


l but also libraries could become agents of truth decay if they do not fulfil these roles – willingly or unwillingly. I am thinking of the “anti-woke” movement in some US states, where libraries were forced to censor their catalogues.


“I think libraries have three important assets that can be helpful in tackling truth decay, each of which are useful in strategies to mitigate truth decay, such as media literacy interventions: their content, as training material; their com-


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