Fractured Reality: How Democracy Can Win the Global Struggle Over the Information Space

The JRC’s report brings together an unusually strong multidisciplinary team — cognitive psychologists, platform researchers, legal scholars, network scientists — to map the structural vulnerabilities of democratic information environments. The diagnosis is familiar but the analytical depth is not: algorithmic systems that prioritise engagement over accuracy, foreign control of dominant platforms, and the erosion of the shared information commons that democratic deliberation requires. What distinguishes this report is its sustained attention to the sovereignty dimension: Europe’s dependence on non-European platforms is not merely a regulatory inconvenience but a strategic vulnerability.

The policy recommendations range from platform reform to investment in alternative information infrastructure and decentralised digital architecture. Some of these are familiar; the JRC’s contribution is to ground them in rigorous analysis of why current approaches are insufficient. For European policymakers working on the Democracy Shield and related initiatives, this report provides the most comprehensive available evidence base for the regulatory and structural interventions under consideration.