Researchers from Institute of Social and Political Studies, UL FSS, participate in the 28th Biennial Conference of AABS, USA

At the conference, they presented two research presentations which have been funded by the Latvian Council of Science (LCS) Fundamental and Applied Research Projects program project “Jeopardizing Democracy through Disinformation and Conspiracies: Reconsidering Experience of Latvia”. The first of them was dedicated to the evaluation of the Latvian memorial landscape from the point of view of gender. Significant imbalances in the representation of men and women in the monuments of the Riga and Latvian regions create a misinformative narrative of history and diminish the social value of women. Of course, the situation in Latvia is not unique, there are relatively few monuments dedicated to women in other countries of the world. This report was presented in the section "Gendered Hierarchies, Ideologies and Discourses".

In the “Understanding Disinformation” section, the researchers presented the report “Information and Disinformation Discourses of Cholera Epidemics in Latvian Media”. It covered the portrayal of cholera, a major infectious disease of the 19th century, in the print press of its time, the discourses it created, and the misinformation circulating in society. The report provided a more detailed insight into the media discourses of the year 1831 and 1871 cholera epidemics, which were identified using a historical approach to discourse.

For more information about the conference, see: https://aabs-balticstudies.org/aabs-2022-in-seattle/ 

The main goal of the Latvian Council of Science (LCS) Fundamental and Applied Research Projects program project “Jeopardizing Democracy through Disinformation and Conspiracies: Reconsidering Experience of Latvia” (lzp-2019/1-0278) is to study in an interdisciplinary way the place of disinformation and conspiracy messages in the Latvian information space, as well as its impact on people's lives, health, safety, and well-being, discussing the historical experience of Latvian society, as well as the risks of contemporary democracy and its values.

Photo: participants of the conference section: “Understanding Disinformation” (May 27, 2022). From the left: Associate Professor Marita Zitmane (LU), Associate Professor Andris Strautmanis (University of Wisconsin-River Falls), Professor Vita Zelče (LU), Asta Zelenkauskaitė (Drexel University), Janis Chakars (Neumann University) un Kristīne Juraitė (Vytautas Magnus University). Picture by Solvita Denisa-Liepniece