Verification, Disordered Discourse, and the Repair of Democratic Reality Webinar

A two-hour webinar with Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat
9 November 2026, 9-11 am EST New York time/ 3 -5 pm CET Amsterdam time
Price: EUR 175

Democracy doesn’t fail simply because lies spread; it fails when reality loses its leverage. When knowing what’s true no longer holds power accountable, the system breaks down. This online training examines how we arrived here, how to diagnose the crisis, and how to repair it.

Grounded in the VDA framework (Verification, Deliberation, Accountability) and the concept of distributed verification, this session moves from diagnosis, to anatomy, to response.

We begin with the information environment itself: how the twentieth-century pyramid of institutional gatekeepers gave way to a flat, algorithmically amplified network, and why — under conditions of attention scarcity and emotional intensity — identity-based belief systems reliably outcompete evidence-based ones.
We then map disordered discourse in detail: its elements, drivers, agents, and stages, and trace how it escalates from individual engagement to group identity, institutionalisation, and finally institutional capture, where distorted narratives are absorbed into the core functions of power.
Finally, we turn to the response: what it means that verification has migrated out of legacy institutions and into distributed networks, and how open-source methods, deliberation and accountability can function as genuine democratic infrastructure rather than after-the-fact fact-checking.

This is not a doom-scroll through misinformation. It’s a working framework for thinking clearly about a disordered information system, and for locating where intervention is actually possible.

Join Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins for two hours of presentation, framework walkthrough and worked examples, followed by an open Q&A.

What you’ll learn:

Understand the network shift: How information moved from 20th-century institutional gatekeepers to flat, algorithmically amplified networks
Unpack why viral beliefs win online: How speed, emotional intensity, and “survival of the fastest” allow identity-driven narratives to outcompete evidence
Master the Disordered Discourse framework: Identify the core elements, drivers, agents, and stages of modern information decay
Analyze institutional capture: Trace the governance failure cascade that embeds distorted narratives into the machinery of power
Apply the VDA lens: Use Verification, Deliberation, and Accountability to diagnose systemic breakdowns as truth migrates out of legacy institutions
Deploy new democratic infrastructure: Utilize open-source verification and distributed accountability as active tools for systemic repair

Experience level:

There are no prerequisite requirements for joining this webinar. Journalists, researchers, policymakers, educators, civil-society practitioners, and anyone working at the intersection of information, trust and democratic resilience. No technical background is assumed.

Logistics:

The webinar will be led by Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins who will guide you through the topics.

Zoom webinar joining details will be shared with participants in the week before the training.

Bellingcat workshops:

In case you would like to learn more about our training, please check our website for upcoming workshops and webinars matching your needs.

Cancellation

Please look closely at the cancellation and event policies in Eventzilla before you take the leap.

FAQs

Why Bellingcat?

Bellingcat is a global collective that has uncovered facts to hold power to account — we share everything, including our methods, because truth belongs to everyone.

Bellingcat began by analyzing footage of chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian civil war back in 2014. In recent years we have worked on covering various topics from civilian harm in Ukraine, through wildlife trafficking in South East Asia, the recruitment of child soldiers in Africa to the luxurious life of Kinahan cartel leaders living openly in Dubai despite an international manhunt.

We turn that same curiosity into a teachable research skill. Combined with practical knowledge of techniques and tools, that’s what this workshop teaches you to do.

How do you screen participants?

We manually approve all applications after registration. We do basic due diligence checks on our participants to be sure that our trainers and all other participants are comfortable with their participation. Members of any police, military or intelligence service are not permitted registration at our workshops, and we allow government employees to join on a case-by-case basis.

Bellingcat reserves the right not to disclose the reasons for declining participation.

That said, the vast majority of participants are approved without any issue.

Who usually attends your workshops?

We have a pretty interesting mix of participants at our trainings. Between a third to a half come from private companies or the corporate world. Among those, we have plenty of information security researchers, corporate security investigators, lawyers, due diligence experts, and other professions. Journalists are the next-most popular profession for our workshops, and then we have a mix of human rights/NGO researchers, academics and students, and even retirees just curious about what this whole OSINT thing is all about.

Can I get an invoice?

In case you need an invoice, please send us an email to [email protected].

Can I receive a certificate for the workshops?

Sure! Just email us ([email protected]) after the workshops, and we’ll send you a PDF certificate.

Can I receive a recording of a workshop?

We do not record our workshops, or allow others to record them. However, we do provide copies of our training slides to participants after the completion of the training for their personal reference.

Can I gift a workshop seat to someone else?

Sure! We have had quite a few people buy workshop attendance for a loved one as a birthday or Christmas gift. Just let us know the name of the person who you are buying the seat for when registration so that we can do a basic due diligence check on them (see the Screening section up above). Feel free to email us at [email protected] to make sure we have their proper contact details so they get all of the invitation information on time.