Mission
The German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) is launching a new two-year phase of its initiative to engage influencers and parliamentary staffers in the effort to create a public space that explores what leadership means in the digital age. Considering that trust is shifting from institutions to individuals, the goal here is to explore the role of influencers, newsfluencers, and politics within this process and understand their mobilization potential on- and offline. The initiative also strives to align transatlantic interests and promote institutional cooperation.
The project aims to include influencers and staffers in discussions on the forces that drive our information landscape that reflect their role in impacting democratic security and integrity. Given the centrality of social media as a source of news, community action, and political mobilization, as well as the many ways influencers interact online, it is essential to incorporate them into the process of finding means of platform governance that address current gray zones.
Approach for 2025/26
This project phase is organized into two one-year cohorts. The classes of 2025/26 and of 2026/27 will consist of 14 influencer fellows – seven from Germany and seven from the United States – and eight parliamentary staffers – four from Germany and four from the United States. Each class will participate in two five-day study visits – one to Berlin, the other to Washington, DC – that will focus on specific preselected topics.
Each study visit will be comprised of off-the-record workshops, meetings, and discussions that will examine current political issues or relevant policy areas that could emerge as focal points for foreign state-backed or homegrown mis-/disinformation.
For the class of 2025/26, the Washington Study Visit will take place from December 2 until December 6, 2025. The Berlin Study Visit will take place from April 14 until April 18, 2026.
Objectives
This initiative aims to incorporate the under-addressed constituency of influencers in the policy discourse around mis-/disinformation as well as illegal and harmful content. Objectives include:
- Raising awareness of the role of influencers and newsfluencers as intermediaries in content moderation and the democratic ecosystem;
- Fostering cooperation between influencers and relevant stakeholders from traditional political institutions – the media, parties, NGOs – in the creation of online social media’s norms and regulations;
- Using the project’s participants as a collective sounding board for areas of concern in current and future campaigns;
- Analyzing similarities and differences in the drivers that shape the information ecosystems in Germany and the United States; and
- Providing policy recommendations based on the project’s discussions and its testing of participant buy-in for policies in Berlin, Brussels, and Washington that maintain healthy information spaces and tackling issues such as those related to notice-and-takedown, demonetization, and de-platforming; the Democracy Shield Initiative; the Digital Services Act (DSA); and Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act.
Ultimately, achieving these objectives will support the policy basis for greater European, transatlantic, and global resilience in the fight against mis-/disinformation and for democratic, fact-based online discourse.
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