AGORA: How to navigate an information war?
War has always made for difficult information environments. In addition to the fog of war, conflicts inevitably extend to narratives – what is known, how it is framed, and what is ignored can all have real-world impacts on different audiences. Narratives are worth fighting over, and this battle extends far beyond their immediate combatants.
The war – or genocide – in Gaza has been a fierce battleground for information warfare. What kind of challenges does this create for news media and its consumers? What kinds of attempts have been made to influence news coverage and public opinion? Above all, what can be done and whose responsibility is it? How should researchers relate to influence campaigns and disinformation in their fields? This session will look at these questions and walk through a few suggestions on how to navigate an information war.
Timo R. Stewart
Timo R. Stewart (D.Soc.Sci.) is a researcher in political history whose areas of expertise include the Israel–Palestine conflict, Western policy in the Middle East, and the role of religion in conflicts and politics. Stewart is currently researching Gaza-related disinformation and influence campaigns at the Centre for European Studies at the University of Helsinki, with funding from the Alfred Kordelin Foundation. He has previously worked at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, and in non-governmental organizations.
In 2025, Stewart published the acclaimed book Palestine and Israel: A History in Maps (Gummerus), for which he was awarded the Finnish State Award for Public Information in 2026. Stewart was named Researcher of the Year in 2025 and Social Scientist of the Year in 2026. His earlier non-fiction books, Valter Juvelius and the Hunt for the Lost Ark (Gaudeamus, 2020) and The Allure of the Promised Land (Gaudeamus, 2022), were both nominated for the prestigious Finlandia Prize for Non-Fiction. In addition, his book on Valter Juvelius received the Lauri Jäntti Prize for Non-Fiction in 2021.