Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy, 2nd Floor, College House, 17 King Edwards Road, London (2026)

13/10/2026

Democracies do not fall only to the fury of crowds. They also fall to the fatigue of citizens who no longer believe that anything they do can matter. That is why we monitor hope.

When Prime Minister Andy Burnham posted a video in August explaining what he meant by "bring back hope", the public wrote back 12,139 times across Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and X. In Let's Bring Back Hope, Part 2, we scored every reply on the Democracy Discourse Index, placed each one on an interactive Discourse Map, and counted the words people chose.

Some of what we found:

→ Four in five replies sit in the Risk band, and only 20 of 12,139 reached Healthy.
→ Most of the reply was not abusive, but it rarely built anything: restraint scored four times higher than recognition, good faith or a call to act.
→ "Hope" was the most-used word in the reply, but its closest companions were lost, gone and zero. One in five comments that used it redefined it, most often as a general election.
→ Each platform spoke its own language: borders and party on Facebook, the household ledger on TikTok, Gaza and climate on Instagram, and the hardest ground of all on X.
→ When citizens answered one another rather than the Prime Minister, the reply got better, and the best of it came from people speaking out of a particular situation.

Hope comes back where people are heard, and where what they are promised can be seen.

Swipe through the findings, and find the full report, the Discourse Map and the lexical appendix in the first comment.

Research by the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy, led by Dr Jacob Jacob.

12/10/2026

𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐫.

Universities can connect independent inquiry with public engagement and civic learning. But the question is whether those lessons translate into how people participate in public life, and how institutions respond.

The Democracy Discourse Index’s faculty-student collaboration offers one example. Research on a society’s own public discourse gives students an opportunity to examine evidence and practise reasoned disagreement. But we should not assume that this automatically builds civic capacity. Its effects need to be evaluated.

That is the fourth synthesis we are sharing from our International Day of Democracy policy dialogue with United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).

𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀 #𝟰:
𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

The learning should not stop with students.

Officials and institutions also need opportunities to connect listening and deliberation with the responsibilities they already hold:

• consultation
• service delivery
• policy review

That requires more than bringing people together to discuss democratic challenges. Partnerships need the authority and resources to act on the evidence they produce, alongside the academic freedom and institutional independence needed to sustain scrutiny.

𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐠𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥. 𝐈𝐭 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞.

Fourth of five syntheses. One more to come.

📖 Full report in the comments.

12/10/2026

We are delighted to share the Phase 3 Policy Brief Series from the Democracy Discourse Index (DDI) Pakistan Observatory: four briefs by student researchers at Iqra University - IU and Aga Khan University who spent recent months triple-coding 1,600 public posts against our framework of empathy, civility, democratic agency and trust.

The national benchmark from this snapshot stands at 45.2% within the concerning band, yet the real insight lies in what that figure conceals, as each conversation examined closely tells a different story:

🔹 Elections & Governance, by Komal Aquil and Ayesha Azib (Iqra University): orderly procedural argument lifts civility into the Mixed band while empathy and trust remain weak, prompting the authors to ask how debate about process might also recognise people.

🔹 Economy & Cost of Living, by Rania Faisal Raja, Faiz Ahmed and Eman Fatima Ahsan (Aga Khan University): the highest composite of the four, with civility at 53.8%, suggests shared hardship can ground civil exchange, though civility should never be mistaken for satisfaction.

🔹 International Affairs, by Momina Khan, Ayesha Naz and Amna Khan (Iqra University): a restrained tone sits alongside empathy of just 39.1%, a reminder that discussing states and strategy is not the same as recognising the people those decisions affect.

🔹 Gender & Social Justice, by Rania Islam, Alina Mohsin and Laiba Asif Butt (Iqra University): the lowest composite of all nine Phase 3 topics, yet agency is its relative strength, capturing people who keep claiming their rights where recognition remains contested.

Together, the briefs affirm what we hold dear at GCRD: civility is not democratic health, and a national average is only the start of understanding. The students' painstaking human coding also supplies the validated ground truth for training our ReHuman AI system, the foundation for measurement at scale.

They also sharpen a question we intend to pursue: if the most hostile, dehumanising voices often travel furthest online, then understanding ordinary public conversation, not only its loudest moments, is essential to any honest account of democratic health.

We are truly excited to be working with such gifted young scholars, and we warmly congratulate every one of these authors on work of real seriousness and insight.

None of this would have been possible without Prof. Dr. Wajiha Raza Rizvi, Senior Fellow at GCRD and Principal Investigator for the DDI in Pakistan, whose intellectual and analytical depth shaped the Index, and whose extraordinary commitment, generosity and unshakeable belief in what young scholars can achieve when entrusted with questions that matter made this work possible. Our deepest thanks to her, and to every colleague and institution that has joined this collaboration.

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟𝐬: 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬.

10/10/2026

Democracy runs on hope. It runs on the ordinary expectation that peaceful participation can change things. When that expectation fails, people lose their reason to keep showing up.

People do not give up on democracy simply because they are frustrated. They give up when participation stops feeling consequential. Frustration with nowhere to go is easily redirected: towards scapegoats, or towards dependence on a single strong leader. That is the opening every demagogue waits for.

We have seen how fragile hope has become. When we analysed public responses to UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham's inaugural "bring back hope" address, "hope" was the most frequent word in the entire corpus. Most of those uses came from people rejecting the message. People were still talking about hope, but many no longer trusted anyone offering it.

Credible hope is the theme of the third synthesis we are sharing from our International Day of Democracy policy dialogue with UNITAR.

𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀 #𝟯:
𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

Hope cannot be announced into being. Reassurance does little while the grievances and institutional failures that make demagogic appeals persuasive go unaddressed. Credible hope rests on fair treatment, accountable decisions, and governments that treat communication as a continuing relationship of accountability. That means:

• acknowledging uncertainty
• explaining constraints
• correcting errors openly

Independent journalism, civil society and digital platforms also shape whether people encounter credible information and the experiences of others. The United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity offer a useful framework for strengthening public trust and empowerment while protecting independent media.

One caution. Trust cannot be built at the expense of legitimate dissent, and empathy must never become a demand that people soften justified claims for justice. A hope that asks people to stop asking is not hope.

𝐇𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞.

The synthesis draws on the evidence and practitioner experience presented at the dialogue, including Democracy Discourse Index studies from Bulgaria, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. Triple human coding provides the ground truth for GCRD's ReHuman AI system to code at scale and produce national scores.

Third of five syntheses. Two more to come.
📖 Full report and the hope study in the comments.

09/10/2026

We're pleased to welcome Delhi Metropolitan Education (DME), Noida, to the Democracy Discourse Index (DDI) University Consortium.

GCRD and DME have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to bring India into the DDI. Together we will build the DDI India observatory, studying how India talks back to its news media and public figures, and adding the conversation of the world’s largest democracy to the Index.

The DDI will collect the public comments posted in response to Indian news outlets and digital public figures across web, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and X. From this pool, representative samples are drawn into weekly coding batches on GCRD's dedicated coding platform.

Students from DME Media and Law schools, working in faculty-supervised research teams as part of course work, will code these comments against the DDI's twenty indicators across four dimensions: empathy, civility, trust language and democratic agency. Each comment is coded independently by three trained coders, with reliability tested against the DDI standard. This human triple-coding provides the ground truth for our ReHuman AI system to code at scale and produce national scores for India.

India's results will join the comparative evidence across the consortium, be published on the Discourse Observatory alongside other DDI countries, and feed into the Global Annual DDI Report.

At DME, the collaboration will be led by Prof. (Dr.) Parul Mehra, Head of the DME Media School, and Bedapriya Lahiri, Assistant Professor at DME Law School.

Our thanks to Prof. (Dr.) Komal Vig, Professor and Director of DME, who signed the MoU with Dr. Jacob Jacob, Executive Director of GCRD.

We look forward to learning more about the India’s democracy through the quality of its public discourse.

08/10/2026

We often read silence in public life as apathy. That reading lets institutions off too lightly.

When people express little sense that they can shape decisions, it may be because they have been excluded, ignored once too often, or never offered a real way in. You cannot teach people to speak well into a room that does not answer.

That is the second finding we are sharing from our International Day of Democracy policy dialogue with United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).

𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀 #𝟮:
𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬

Programmes that teach respectful communication have their place. On their own, they may leave the deeper problem untouched. Civic learning and institutional responsiveness have to grow together.

People need to know:
• how their input enters decisions
• who responds to it
• how they can seek review or redress

Participation is only meaningful when it brings fair consideration, reasoned decisions and a real possibility of challenge. Where discrimination, insecurity or inaccessible procedures stand in the way, no amount of civic education puts people on equal terms.

The democratic deficit is relational before it is institutional. Renewal asks institutions to listen as seriously as citizens are asked to speak.

The synthesis draws on Democracy Discourse Index evidence from Bulgaria, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. Triple human coding provides the ground truth for GCRD's ReHuman AI system to code at scale and produce national scores.

Second of five syntheses. Three more to come.
📖 Full report in the comments.

07/10/2026

Democracy is more than the institutions we build. It is also about the relationships that allow those institutions to work.

Elections, constitutional safeguards, civic freedoms and accountable institutions are essential to democratic health.

But they do not tell the whole story.

At our recent International Day of Democracy policy dialogue, 𝐑𝐞𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲: 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐑𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐥, convened by the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) in collaboration with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), we explored what public discourse can reveal about the condition of democratic life.

The discussion informed five areas of policy synthesis for democratic renewal.

𝐏𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀 #𝟭:
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡

Assessments of democratic health should not only examine constitutional safeguards, electoral integrity and civic space.

They should also examine how people relate to institutions and to one another.

The Democracy Discourse Index contributed to this by tracking empathy, civility, trust and democratic agency in public discourse across topics and countries and during significant public events.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲:

It means asking whether people can disagree without treating one another as enemies.

It means understanding whether citizens trust institutions enough to remain engaged.

It means paying attention to whether people believe they have the ability to influence decisions that affect their lives.

And it means recognising that discourse findings cannot be interpreted in isolation.

Changes in empathy, civility, trust or democratic agency need to be considered alongside the institutional and wider context in which they occur.

The question is not whether one set of measures matters more than another.

It is whether we are looking at enough of the picture to understand what is happening to democratic life.

Because democratic renewal is not only about strengthening institutions.

It is also about strengthening the relationships between people and institutions, and between citizens themselves, that allow democracy to function.

This is the first of five areas of policy synthesis from the GCRD-UNITAR Policy Dialogue Report.

Follow along as we share the remaining four.

📖 Read the full report in the comments.

05/10/2026

GCRD was at the 2026 Athens Democracy Forum 🇬🇷

Dr Jacob Jacob, our Founding Executive Director, joined democracy leaders from around the world at the 14th Athens Democracy Forum, organised by The Democracy & Culture Foundation in association with The The New York Times

The forum brought together more than 400 democracy leaders, policymakers, journalists, academics, artists, technologists, civil society leaders and young activists.

Under the theme “Building Order Out of Chaos,” conversations explored the profound pressures facing democratic societies - from declining public trust and polarisation to technological disruption, geopolitical uncertainty and the changing relationship between citizens and institutions.

For GCRD, the Forum was also an opportunity to bring a different question into the conversation:

What happens when we put public discourse: human dignity, relationships and our shared humanity back at the heart of democracy?

Rehumanising democracy is not about romanticising the past. It is about recognising that democracy is ultimately sustained by people - by how we listen to one another, how we handle disagreement, how we exercise power, and whether citizens feel seen, heard and valued.

From Athens, GCRD returns with renewed conviction that the future of democracy will depend not only on better institutions and policies, but also on better relationships, deeper participation and a renewed commitment to our shared human dignity.

For us, the democratic question is fundamentally about how we build a democratic future worthy of our shared humanity.

The link to read the full story and watch Dr Jacob’s speech is in the comments.

03/10/2026

Happy Birthday, Dr. Margee M. Ensign!

Today, we celebrate our Board Chair, Dr. Margee M. Ensign, and honour a remarkable career defined by leadership, service and a deep commitment to improving lives through education and community engagement.

Across three continents, Dr. Ensign has dedicated her work to strengthening educational institutions, advancing civic engagement and building meaningful partnerships between universities and the communities they serve.

Her contributions in Northeast Nigeria, particularly through the Adamawa Peace Initiative, reflect her enduring commitment to peacebuilding, education and humanitarian action. Her leadership continues to demonstrate the important role institutions can play in addressing societal challenges and creating opportunities for meaningful change.

At the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy, we are grateful for her leadership, wisdom and continued commitment to a more humane and inclusive democratic future.

As you celebrate another year, Dr. Ensign, may the years ahead bring renewed purpose, good health, fulfilment and many more opportunities to make a difference.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Ensign.

With warm wishes from all of us at the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy.

01/10/2026

Happy 66th Independence Day, Nigeria!

As Nigeria marks 66 years of independence, we reflect on the journey of a nation shaped by the aspirations, resilience and contributions of its people.

Independence carries a responsibility to build a society where every person is valued, every voice matters, and human dignity is protected.

At the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD), our work is grounded in the belief that democracy must remain centred on people. This means strengthening democratic values, promoting human dignity and advancing institutions that serve those they are meant to represent.

As we commemorate this milestone, we reaffirm our commitment to a more humane, inclusive and accountable democracy.

Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy

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