As the world grapples with a raging pandemic, information literacy — the capacity to critically evaluate content for its quality and usefulness — is crucial to survival and recovery. Trust in public institutions, exacerbating class conflict, fomenting fear and hatred, weakening the credibility of our institutions has as reached an all-time low, emboldening hostile actors, and jeopardizing all human society and especially democracies.
The technologies and platforms that now connect billions of people around the world enable the creation and rapid dissemination of more sophisticated and dangerous forms of distortion than ever before. The growing scope and scale of the threats are seen in politics, health, the environment, and technology, among other areas of society.
This report sheds light on the global trends that come from these new and evolving forms of misinformation and disinformation, issues that increasingly affect all stakeholders, including individuals, civil society, business, and government. While some may downplay or dismiss the severity of this threat, these are not victimless crimes — they can cause suffering, economic loss, and even death.
In the lead-up to the UN General Assembly, CollaborateUp and The Wilson Center hosted a panel of experts to combat these growing threats to democracy.
We also hosted a panel of experts in partnership with Diplomatic Courier on the power of science, evidence, and information literacy to counter these threats and their adverse effects on our planet and people. To see the full recordings of both events, please see below.
Combatting these issues and restoring trust in reliable sources of information and data requires urgent action at the highest levels, something not currently happening in a coordinated manner. Moreover, all these stakeholders must unite to eradicate this scourge. No individual group can overcome this challenge alone. This report provides recommendations for a global, multi-stakeholder approach to addressing these issues.