PART II — Publishing Peace in a System That Prioritises Militarism

Jan Oberg, TFF director

April 10, 2026

How TFF Maintains a Daily Voice in a Digital World Built for Noise

This article is part of the series “TFF at 40″ and it invites you to learn about Four Decades of Publishing Peace. It takes a look at how a small, people‑financed peace foundation has communicated across four generations of technology — from wax stencils and fax machines to mass email and Substack — and why TFF continues to publish every single day in a system that rewards noise, conflict, and militarism.

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What it means to publish peace every single day in a digital system built for 24/7 news and other noise, confrontation, and militarism. How TFF’s independence, continuity, and global readership defy algorithms, donor cycles, and Western media censorhip — and why the Majority World keeps listening.

When the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research turned forty on January 1, 2026, it did so in the same quiet way it has worked since 1986: by speaking into the world every single day. Not loudly or reactively, but steadily — through articles, videos, reflections, and commentary shared across X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, VK, our homepage, and Substack. After Google‑YouTube-Vimeo censorship, Substack has also become the natural home for our video collection.

This daily rhythm stands out in a field where communication is usually tied to – mostly – negative news and events, funding cycles, or geopolitical noise. Many organisations publish only when something demands attention, like when they hold a seminar or publish a report. TFF’s rhythm is different. It is not driven by campaigns or institutional calendars but by a long‑standing commitment: keeping the peace perspective alive in a world that increasingly ignores it and tramples the UN Charter underfoot.

A different kind of content

The difference is not only frequency but character. Much of what circulates in the NGO and think‑tank world is derivative — summaries of other people’s work, announcements, or material shaped to avoid friction. TFF’s output is overwhelmingly original: daily analysis, structural critique, reflections on global affairs, and explorations of alternatives rarely found in mainstream policy discourse. It’s created by our amasing TFF Associates – 150 over those 40 years of the world’s finest peace scholars, lawyers, diplomats, social scientists, journalists, former UN people and – well, you name them.

And here a rarely stated fact: Based on publicly observable publishing patterns across peace institutes, foreign‑policy think tanks, global‑studies centres, and international‑affairs NGOs, TFF’s daily output places it ahead of 90% of organisations in the field in terms of publishing frequency and continuity. This is not a boast but a structural observation. Daily original analysis is rather rare in international politics.

Why peace content struggles to travel

Peace content does not travel easily in today’s digital environment. It is not censored dramatically – and not even visibly to the recipients – but it is quietly pushed down by ranking systems that decide what appears in people’s feeds on social media and search engines like Google. These systems reward what is sensational, emotional, personalised, commercially profitable, or aligned with dominant narratives. Peace analysis with a strong emphasis on alternative ways of thinking fits none of those categories.

Anything touching on criticism of wars, geopolitics, NATO, nuclear weapons, official, constructed narratives or criticism of Western policy is automatically classified as political or sensitive. Sensitive content is shown to fewer people. Reflective writing is interpreted as low‑engagement because it does not trigger the emotional spikes that keep users scrolling. And as I said in Part 1, patterns of reading and understanding complex issues have changed towards history’s lowest attention span and highest superficiality.

And because TFF basically shares external links to its own and other valuable materials — that we post on Substack, our homepage, articles, and videos — the algorithm applies another penalty, since platforms prefer to keep users inside their own walls.

A small foundation with a steady presence

In this landscape, TFF’s way of working is unusual. Where many organisations communicate intermittently, TFF maintains a daily presence. Where others rely on institutional messaging, TFF continues to produce original analysis. Where others follow political winds, TFF follows its mandate: supporting the UN Charter’s norm that peace shall be established by peaceful means. Most Nordic peace institutes have been mainstreamed into security studies and international relations, or have been closed down by governments that don’t want peace perspectives on anything (and have also starved movements to a slow death). TFF is still around with its commitment to true peace and true peace research, not US/NATO-compatible militarised ‘peace.’

And where many depend on donors, TFF is financed only by citizens, allowing it to speak without adjusting its voice to political correctness. And its founders and all Associates deliver voluntary work only, we have no staff, and no one is paid a dime.

This sets TFF apart from all those institutes that call themselves independent. Our independence shapes the tone of the work. It allows for long‑term thinking, structural critique, and the exploration of alternatives that do not fit within dominant policy frames – and certainly not within state-financed institutes and corporation-financed think tanks.

TFF operates on about US$ 25,000 a year, financed by citizens worldwide. If you are not one of them, please consider supporting a foundation where every dime goes to activities, not bureaucracy.

And yet, people still find their way

Despite down‑ranking, link penalties, and the absence of donor amplification, people continue to find TFF. They subscribe, read, share, and return — not because the algorithm pushes the content toward them, but because they are looking for something the algorithm does not supply: a steady, independent voice willing to imagine a world organised around something other than fear and force.

While Western media continue to ignore TFF and its roughly fifty diverse Associates, non‑Western media increasingly turn to us. Interest in how to create a better future is far greater in the Majority World than in the self‑absorbed West, which makes up about 12% of humanity. We will continue to work with those who seek constructive futures — and remain open to Western media should they one day be free enough to engage with peace and with us.

And how many people do we reach each day?

Frankly, we do not know — and we do not try to know. Across our various platforms, we have roughly 45,000 subscribers and followers. We cannot track how many people read and/or share our posts, nor how many of the total actually see them. Add to that several hundred videos on different channels, YouTube in particular. Some of them have been viewed by hundreds of thousands over time, but we have no way of knowing how many more see them every day.

And when we publish on someone else’s media — not least in China, such as China Daily, CCTV, CGTN and others — we have no insight into how many people encounter those articles and videos over time.

So a very, very rough estimate is that TFF reaches somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 people per day across all platforms and channels. This means at least 20-25 million people worldwide per year.

No, that does not change the world in a few days. But it does make a difference to each and every reader and viewer. And for a shoestring, all‑volunteer operation, we consider it a satisfactory and meaningful result — a quiet, daily contribution to a more peaceful world. Remember, we started out 40 years ago by reaching 1200 once a month or so, now we reach about 1,6 million a month.

After forty years, TFF remains what it has always been: a small, citizen‑financed peace research and public education foundation, or think tank, that speaks into the world every day. Not because the system rewards it, but because the world will always need voices for peace — and because the vast majority of humanity wants peace and solves conflict with as little violence as possible. And if I may add one more reason: Because nothing is more meaningful than working for less violence, intelligent conflict-resolution and true peace.

We will continue to serve them with solid analyses and visions of a better future. For the simple reason that if the world does not focus on, discuss and navigate toward a better future – but drives on by looking only into the rear mirror – we shall, sooner or later, have an accident.

The future is peace. Peace is the future. And it is eminently possible that we shall all see that when the US/NATO-misled Western Empire has crumbled. And you and TFF will soon witness this gigantic turning point for the better…

  TFF publishing peace, TFF publishing peace over 40 years