Flooding the Space

Humanity is currently defined by constant crisis and information overload. Flooding the Space reveals a disturbing truth: the greatest political power no longer lies in persuasion, but in chaos. From the rise of emotionally charged misinformation to the collapse of coherent public debate, today’s leaders are no longer simply communicating. They are strategically disorienting. Drawing from insights from propaganda theory, cognitive psychology, media studies, and political strategy, author J.W. Bouckaert introduces a progressive new concept: strategic chaos as governance. Through telling case studies—including Donald Trump’s second presidency, Bolsonaro’s digital populism, and Modi’s media machine—Bouckaert examines how contradiction, emotional priming, and algorithmic amplification are used not to inform citizens but to overwhelm them. At the heart of the book is the groundbreaking FTSeffect formula, a new model that quantifies the impact of saturation-based political messaging in real time. Accessible yet rigorously researched, Flooding the Space offers more than a critique—it provides a toolkit. With frameworks for journalists, researchers, policymakers, and citizens alike, the book shows how to recognize, measure, and respond to communicative destabilization before it takes hold. If you’ve ever felt the public conversation is being hijacked or that facts no longer matter, this book explains why. More importantly, it shows how democracies can fight back.