Knowledge Transmission and Science Communication Against Polarization and Disinformation
- Keynote (Ω)
Gilles Marchand | University of Geneva
Our contemporary liberal societies are undergoing rapid and profound transformations — technological, environmental, geopolitical, and cultural. These shifts create two major challenges: first, maintaining social cohesion among individuals who are less connected by geography and institutions, and more by emotions, identity markers, or digital communities; second, preserving rational approaches that require time, nuance, and compromise.
Individual freedoms and public debate therefore depend on accessible, verified, and well-documented information — information that fosters understanding of history, science, the complexity of the world, political issues, events, facts, and figures. Ignorance is the antithesis of democracy.
However, digitalization, social media, and artificial intelligence are challenging traditional information professions, devaluing established media, and dismantling their audiences and business models.
Never before has mass manipulation been so easy and powerful. Never before has disinformation been so dangerous. In the future, the fate of democracies will depend on their ability to produce and circulate high-quality information that enables rich, lively, but always informed public debates.
In this context, science has a duty to communicate — to transmit knowledge in ways that truly reach and engage the public.
Scientific institutions must commit fully and develop their expertise in this transmission. They must become active participants rather than merely watching, as spectators, the more or less successful reuse of their work.
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Gilles Marchand
Gilles Marchand served as Director General of SRG SSR from 2017 until the end of 2024.
Prior to that, he was Director of TSR (Télévision Suisse Romande). In 2010, he took over the leadership of RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse) after merging French-speaking Switzerland’s radio and television into a single public service broadcaster.
Gilles Marchand also held various mandates on boards and within institutions such as TV5 Monde, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and the University of Geneva. From 2013 to 2017, he served as a member of the Federal Media Commission of Switzerland.
He began his professional career in 1985 in book publishing, then joined the Tribune de Genève, and later Ringier Romandie in 1992, where he served as director from 1998 to 2001.
From 1990 to 2000, Gilles Marchand was actively involved in the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) in Paris, where he led numerous training programs for independent publishers in Africa and Eastern Europe.
Born in Lausanne in 1962, Gilles Marchand holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Geneva.
