Open Forum #52 Strengthening Information Integrity Through Coalitions

Summary

This discussion at the Internet Governance Forum 2025 focused on building multi-stakeholder coalitions to protect information integrity and combat misinformation in the digital age. The session, organized in partnership with Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office, brought together representatives from government, civil society, platforms, and international organizations to explore collaborative approaches to addressing information pollution.

The moderator introduced UNDP’s Global Action Coalition on Information Integrity and Elections as an example of successful international cooperation, highlighting how it has evolved to support National Coalitions on Information Integrity at the country level. Panelists identified several pressing challenges, including the rapid advancement of AI technologies making disinformation cheaper and more sophisticated, the targeting of vulnerable groups through hate speech and gender-based violence online, and the particular risks faced by refugees and displaced populations in humanitarian contexts.

Dr. Rafael Ramos Monteiro de Souza from Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office emphasized the importance of public consultation and cross-sector partnerships in their national approach, including cooperation agreements with research institutes and collaboration with digital platforms. Ayman Mhanna from the Samir Kassir Foundation highlighted critical funding challenges facing civil society, noting that only 0.5% of global development aid goes to media development and information integrity work, while malicious actors spend far more on disinformation campaigns.

Representatives from humanitarian organizations stressed the need for local, contextual responses while engaging with global platforms, particularly for communities using less common languages or in non-commercial markets. Platform representatives, including TikTok’s Francesca Scarpola, described their evolution from passive observers to active partners, working with fact-checkers, civil society, and electoral commissions to combat misinformation during elections.

The discussion concluded with calls for more innovative, ecosystemic approaches that engage actors beyond traditional coalitions, including private sector partners and academic institutions, to build sustainable funding models and leverage local expertise in the fight for information integrity.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Multi-stakeholder coalitions are essential for addressing information integrity challenges**: The discussion emphasized that no single actor—whether governments, platforms, civil society, or international organizations—can tackle misinformation and disinformation alone. Effective responses require coordinated collaboration across sectors.

– **Local ownership and context-specific solutions are critical**: Multiple speakers stressed that successful coalitions must be locally-led and tailored to specific national and regional contexts, rather than imposing top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches from international actors.

– **Severe funding constraints are undermining civil society’s ability to combat information pollution**: A stark reality was presented that global development aid allocates only 0.5% (around $400 million) to media development and information integrity work, compared to much larger budgets of state actors spreading disinformation.

– **Vulnerable populations face disproportionate harm from information manipulation**: The discussion highlighted how refugees, women, minorities, and communities in crisis situations are particularly targeted by misinformation campaigns and hate speech, requiring specialized protection approaches.

– **Technology platforms are evolving from passive observers to active partners**: Platform representatives described their shift toward proactive collaboration with fact-checkers, civil society, and governments, though concerns were raised about weakening safety guardrails and reduced investment in trust and safety measures.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore how to build effective multi-stakeholder coalitions and partnerships to protect information integrity in democratic societies. Participants shared experiences, challenges, and best practices for collaborative approaches to combating misinformation and disinformation, with a focus on moving from fragmented individual efforts to coordinated collective action.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a professional and collaborative tone throughout, characterized by urgency about the scale of information integrity challenges but also cautious optimism about potential solutions. The tone became more pointed and direct when discussing resource constraints and funding cuts, particularly in Ayman Mhanna’s intervention which was notably blunt about the inadequacy of current funding levels. Despite acknowledging significant challenges, speakers consistently emphasized hope through partnership and shared examples of successful collaborative initiatives.

Speakers

– **Ayman Mhanna** – Executive Director of the Samir Kassir Foundation

– **Constanze Neher** – Head of Directorate Development Policy Issues at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development

– **Audience** – Various audience members asking questions (including Silvia Cadena from World Wide Web Consortium, Jan Lublinsky from DW Academy, Yu Jie from social media research background, and Raul Manuel, member of parliament in the Philippines)

– **Gisella Lomax** – Senior UN Advisor Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, UNHCR

– **Moderator** – Session moderator (name: Sarah, based on transcript references)

– **Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza** – National Prosecutor of the Union for the Defence of Democracy at the Office of the Attorney General of Brazil

– **Bojana Kostic** – Media and Platform Regulation Expert at the Global Forum for Media Development

– **Francesca Scapolo** – Election Integrity Public Policy Lead from TikTok

**Additional speakers:**

None – all speakers mentioned in the transcript are included in the provided speakers names list.

# Multi-Stakeholder Coalitions for Information Integrity: A Comprehensive Discussion Report

## Introduction and Context

This discussion at the Internet Governance Forum 2024 brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to examine the critical challenge of building effective multi-stakeholder coalitions to protect information integrity in the digital age. The session was organized in partnership with Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office, featuring representatives from government institutions, civil society organizations, technology platforms, international organizations, and academic institutions.

The moderator, Sarah, opened by explaining UNDP’s Global Action Coalition on Information Integrity and Elections, established in 2022, which has evolved to support National Coalitions on Information Integrity at the country level starting in 2024. This framework provided the foundation for exploring how collaborative approaches can address the growing threats of misinformation and disinformation in democratic societies.

## Key Challenges in Information Integrity

### Technological Acceleration of Threats

Dr. Rafael Ramos Monteiro de Souza from Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office emphasized how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are fundamentally transforming the information landscape, making disinformation creation “cheaper, easier, and faster” while increasing the sophistication of harmful content. He cited the Romanian case as a recent example of AI’s impact on electoral processes, describing these developments as creating structural threats to democratic governance.

Constanze Neher from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development reinforced this perspective, arguing that disinformation represents “a targeted strategy” rather than merely an unavoidable disturbance. She stated that in Africa, more than 60% of major disinformation campaigns are reportedly financed by foreign state actors, though this figure should be understood as her assessment rather than independently verified data. In authoritarian contexts, she explained, these tactics suppress dissent and silence journalists and human rights defenders, while in democracies, they erode electoral trust and weaken civic space.

### Vulnerable Populations Under Attack

Gisela Lomax, Senior UN Advisor on Information Integrity for UNHCR, highlighted the particular vulnerabilities faced by refugees and displaced populations. She revealed that a UNHCR survey found 20% of staff have been personally targeted with disinformation, while over 30% know of refugee-led organizations taking direct action on information integrity issues. She emphasized how “people who use social media in less common languages, in non-commercial markets for these companies, war zones where they are not selling advertising, are disproportionately at risk,” revealing how commercial incentives determine protection levels.

## The Resource Challenge Crisis

### Exposing the Scale Mismatch

Ayman Mhanna, Executive Director of the Samir Kassir Foundation, provided the discussion’s most striking intervention by presenting detailed research on funding flows that exposed a fundamental crisis in resource allocation. According to his analysis, out of approximately $212 billion in global development aid in 2024 (itself a 7% decline from 2023), only around 0.5%—approximately $400 million—went to media development, information environment work, independent media, journalism training, press freedom, digital literacy, and journalist safety combined.

Mhanna contrasted this with what he described as significantly larger budgets for malicious actors, fundamentally reframing the discussion from optimistic coalition-building to confronting harsh realities about sustainability. He noted that civil society faces a fundamental paradox: “civil society is asked to play a very important role in building coalitions, in cooperating with different actors, and in fighting effectively information manipulation, while civil society is now more than ever itself under attack” through both smear campaigns and systematic funding cuts.

### Alternative Funding Approaches

Mhanna called for “organic funding from society itself,” suggesting engagement with sectors not traditionally involved in media development, including hospitality, crafts, industry, and trade sectors. He advocated for an “ecosystemic approach” that works “across the aisle” with non-traditional partners, recognizing that information integrity challenges affect actors beyond the traditional expert communities.

Bojana Kostic from the Global Forum for Media Development reinforced this perspective, advocating for bottom-up empowerment and participatory approaches that move away from top-down donor-driven models. She highlighted the Journalism Cloud Alliance as an example of an alternative cooperative platform approach prioritizing shared ownership and public interest governance.

## Multi-Stakeholder Approaches and Best Practices

### Brazil’s Comprehensive Model

Dr. Rafael detailed Brazil’s approach through their prosecution unit, established through extensive public consultation with over 80 specialists from civil society, academia, and fact-checking organizations. This model emphasizes balancing freedom of expression with protection from harmful content, following international human rights standards while developing enforcement strategies that avoid censorship. Brazil is also leading a G20 initiative on information integrity and climate change, focusing on the upcoming COP 30 conference.

### Germany’s Development Cooperation Perspective

Constanze Neher outlined Germany’s approach through development cooperation, emphasizing that effective coalitions require local ownership, context-specific solutions, and embedding within broader democratic reform efforts. She highlighted the role of DW Academy, particularly important after USAID’s withdrawal from media development work, and stressed the need for “smart regulation with safeguards” that aims for accountability rather than censorship.

### Platform Evolution and Concrete Results

Francesca Scapolo, Election Integrity Public Policy Lead from TikTok, described how platforms have evolved from “passive observers to active partners.” She provided specific metrics: TikTok’s election centers were viewed 7.5 million times during EU elections, and over 200,000 videos were removed for misinformation violations with 96% removed proactively. She outlined TikTok’s establishment of local safety advisory councils and partnerships with fact-checkers and electoral commissions.

However, Gisela Lomax raised concerns about “weakening guardrails and reduction in trust and safety capacities at major platforms,” particularly affecting users in less commercially viable markets.

### Humanitarian Sector Innovations

Gisela described UNHCR’s community-first approach working through partnerships with digital rights organizations, academia, and governments while emphasizing refugee-led organizations. She noted rapid response capabilities, such as Norwegian fact-checkers getting content into classrooms within three days of major misinformation events, demonstrating potential for speed in counter-narrative efforts.

## Bridging Expert Communities and Local Solutions

### The Challenge of True Collaboration

Jan Lublinsky from DW Academy made a crucial observation about current limitations: “we are good at cooperating with the people we know well, with our own expert communities… It’s much harder to bridge the gap to the neighbour communities.” He provided examples of how even formal multi-stakeholder processes can fail to achieve true integration, with different working groups within the same initiative failing to communicate effectively.

DW Academy committed to hosting an annual meeting in Bonn in December to bring together media development and disaster communication communities, addressing this gap between related but separate expert communities.

### Community-Led Initiatives and Local Ownership

The discussion consistently emphasized the critical importance of local ownership and context-specific solutions. Gisela’s finding that communities are already acting independently challenged assumptions about external intervention needs, suggesting that effective coalition-building should focus on supporting existing community initiatives rather than creating new structures.

Ayman suggested developing local predictive algorithms to detect disinformation campaigns early, leveraging academic and research circles working with artificial intelligence to build local capacity rather than depending solely on external technical solutions.

## Geographic and Linguistic Equity Gaps

Yu Jie, an audience member with social media research background, highlighted significant geographic coverage gaps, noting that no IFCN-authorized fact-checking organizations are based in Russia or China despite significant information flows from these countries. This observation illustrated how geopolitical factors create gaps in global information integrity infrastructure.

These equity concerns reflect broader challenges where language barriers and cultural differences create additional obstacles, with platforms and fact-checking organizations often lacking capacity in less common languages while cultural contexts affect how misinformation spreads and how counter-narratives should be developed.

## Technical Infrastructure and Standards

Silvia Cadena from the World Wide Web Consortium highlighted the importance of technical standards and metadata specifications for content creators to ensure information integrity. However, this technical infrastructure perspective was not fully integrated into the broader discussion, suggesting a gap between technical and policy communities that mirrors the broader challenge of building truly comprehensive coalitions.

## Regulatory Balance and Implementation Challenges

The discussion revealed different approaches to regulatory responses, with general agreement on balancing enforcement with fundamental rights protection. Dr. Rafael emphasized avoiding censorship while ensuring accountability, while Constanze called for “smart regulation with safeguards” that protects democratic values while avoiding authoritarian overreach.

Raul Manuel, a member of parliament from the Philippines, highlighted implementation challenges, noting that the Philippines typically relies on bilateral relationships between election commissions and individual actors rather than comprehensive multi-stakeholder approaches, pointing to gaps between theoretical models and practical implementation.

## Future Commitments and Unresolved Challenges

### Concrete Commitments

Several speakers made specific commitments: Germany committed to continuing support for national coalitions with expanded scope beyond elections; UNDP committed to building on discussion insights to support new national coalitions with German government support; and Brazil announced its leadership of the global initiative on information integrity and climate change alongside UNESCO and the UN.

### Persistent Challenges

Despite these commitments, significant challenges remain unresolved. The massive funding gap highlighted by Mhanna’s research remains unaddressed, with current resources insufficient compared to the scale of the challenge. The question of ensuring adequate coverage for all geographical regions and vulnerable populations requires continued attention, as does the challenge of implementing true multi-stakeholder models rather than relying on bilateral arrangements.

## Conclusion and Implications

This discussion revealed both the maturity and limitations of current approaches to building multi-stakeholder coalitions for information integrity. While there was strong consensus on the fundamental nature of challenges and the need for collaborative responses, significant gaps remain in implementation, funding, and coordination.

The conversation evolved from initial optimism about collaborative solutions to a more sobering recognition of the scale and intentionality of information integrity challenges. Ayman Mhanna’s data-driven interventions were particularly catalytic, exposing resource mismatches and structural vulnerabilities that undermine coalition efforts.

The path forward requires addressing the massive funding gap, developing more inclusive approaches that engage actors beyond traditional expert communities, and creating sustainable models that reduce dependence on donor-driven approaches. Most critically, it requires recognizing that information integrity is not a technical problem to be solved but an ongoing challenge requiring sustained, collaborative, and locally-rooted responses that adapt to evolving threats while protecting democratic values and human rights.

The consensus achieved despite diverse institutional perspectives suggests potential for coordinated action. However, the unresolved challenges around funding, coordination, and implementation indicate that significant work remains to translate this consensus into effective collective responses to information integrity threats.

Moderator: and in partnership with the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in Germany and the Attorney General’s Office of Brazil, I’m very happy to welcome you to this Open Forum session at IGF 2025. We are meeting at one of the world’s most important gatherings for shaping the future of digital governance, and the growing number of sessions we’ve noticed focused on information integrity sends, we think, a powerful message. This isn’t any longer a niche tech issue. It sits at the heart of how we protect trust, participation, and democracy in the digital age. The impact of information pollution in our societies is significant, as we all know. It can distort public discourse, fueling polarization and undermining the accountability and responsiveness of governance systems. It can delegitimize electoral institutions and processes, even those conducted with integrity. This erosion of trust strikes at the foundation of democratic systems. From Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, our partners are sounding the alarm that the integrity of public debate is under threat, that hate speech, particularly against women and minorities, is on the rise, and that new technologies, including AI, are accelerating both the spread and sophistication of harmful content. In today’s digital landscape, where information holds immense power and misinformation can cause real harm, no single actor can address these challenges alone. Whether it’s international organizations, governments, platforms, or civil society, all of us have a role to play. That’s why collaboration and coalitions are more important than ever, and that’s what we’re here to discuss today. But before we start the panel discussion, and I’m delighted to have… three panellists here in the room with me and three panellists online so we have a busy session this afternoon. Please allow me to share a short example from UNDP’s own work to illustrate the value of collaboration and coalitions. In 2022, along with our key partners, UNDP recognised the need for a coordinated global response to the ongoing challenges and we launched the Global Action Coalition on Information Integrity and Elections, bringing together diverse global and regional stakeholders and I see many of those stakeholders with us today, both in the room and online. As we gathered momentum at the global level and results began to emerge, we also recognised the need for coordinated action at the national level and in 2024 we supported the creation of National Coalitions on Information Integrity to engage stakeholders in protecting the integrity of electoral processes at the national level. These provide structured mechanisms for multi-stakeholder collaboration, bridging gaps between civil society, media, EMBs, government, institutions, platforms and other stakeholders to foster collaboration and resilience against information pollution. And these coalitions are showing real results. In countries where UNDP supports this work, we’ve seen how they coordinate rapid response, help foster stronger collaboration, improve coordination around elections and support more consistent informed responses to information challenges. So I’m happy to share that with continued support from the government of Germany, we will build on these insights to support a new set of national coalitions with the aim of promoting the integrity of the information ecosystem, not just around elections but more broadly. So today’s session brings together a diverse and experienced group of voices to reflect on this urgent challenge around digital governance, how to build those effective coalitions and multi-stakeholder partnerships to protect information integrity. So we feel privileged to have with us today in person here next to me Dr. Rafael Ramos Monteiro de Souza, National Prosecutor of the Union for the Defence of Democracy at the Office of the Attorney General of Brazil. Online we have Constanze Nehe, Head of Directorate Development Policy Issues at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Also here we have Gisela Lomax, Senior UN Advisor Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, UNHCR. We have Bojana Kostivsja, Media and Platform Regulation Expert at the Global Forum for Media Development. Online we have Ayman Manna, Executive Director of the Samir Kassir Foundation and online we also have Francesca Scarpola, the Election Integrity Public Policy Lead from TikTok. will see that we have representatives from across government, from civil society, from the platforms, from the UN system, and together we’ll explore what it takes to move from fragmentation to collective action. And we do invite you, the audience, here in the room and online to participate and ask questions and challenge what you hear. So just before we dive into the discussion, let me just take a moment to tell you what to expect. It’s designed as a roundtable style, interactive, as much as is possible with headphones and online and offline. I’ll do my best to support a dynamic exchange. So we’ve asked all our panellists to make short interventions and then we hope to have a chance to open up for open dialogue. There is one microphone here in the room and the opportunity online as well. So in order to support that hybrid participation, we’ve arranged the lineup to alternate between in-person and online speakers to try and keep the flow going. So I’ve asked each of the speakers to make an initial three-minute opening reflection to focus on their experience with multi-stakeholder cooperation, coalition building and platform engagement around information integrity. So we’ll start here on my left with Dr Rafael. Could you perhaps, you know, thinking of information integrity, give us some thoughts on what you see as the most pressing risks and where do you find signs of progress or hope?

Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza: Okay, good afternoon Sarah, dear colleagues, everyone here in the audience and also online. First of all, thank you for the invitation. It’s an honour to join the discussion here at the IGF, learn from different perspectives and have the opportunity to share some thoughts from the Brazilian experience. Regarding pressing risks, as you know, many studies indicate that the rapid development of emerging technologies, particularly generative AI, will impact the entire cycle of this information. From the study one, and that visual distribution procedures in a digital world is generally complete and efficient. And most of the cases a few months later, from creation to selecting segmentation to the master distribution or facing a time when the process has become cheaper, easier, and faster. Such mechanisms enable more convincing and more personalized content such as Faker. And, of course, we are seeing some progress in the regulatory response. We are seeing some progress in the regulatory response, not only to democracy and elections, as the recent Romanian-Argentinian case remember us, but also to vulnerable groups, often targeted by hate speech online and gender violence, fraud, and scams. But, on the other hand, we are seeing some progress in light of the difficulties we are facing. For example, when we say how the copywriting on the other hand can depend on the idea that behaviors that also are illegal online must also be illegal offline. In this sense, thousands or 1,500 hundred set of tests, the private sectors play a central role on a safe, secure and safe online platform. In this sense, we need to make sure that the platforms are safe, secure, accountable and transparent, imposing obligations, and while also demanding the respect of human rights. As the Brazilian Supreme Court is about to conclude this week, in some cases also holding platforms liable for third-party legal and harmful content, including damage from ads and boosted posts. In some cases the sites are sensitive to bills thanking the law and vice versa. that these developments occur alongside a strong commitment to freedom of expression, opinion, press, opposition, humor, which are preserved as protected discourse and pillars of a vibrant public sphere. While there is no silver bullet for decisions and many gaps remain unsolved, these enforcement strategies are part of best practice and bring us closer to the implementation of international human rights standards, including UN principles, UNESCO guidelines, and OECD recommendations. So we believe that when combined with preventive, collaborative, and long-term measures, these efforts can empower other stakeholders to tackle these challenges.

Moderator: Thank you. Thank you so much. And I think many of us have been looking to the processes going on in Brazil and how the judicial system is involved and how the balance between supporting a variety of human rights while maintaining that balance between freedom of expression and safety and protection of minorities is playing out in your context. So we’re delighted to have you here and thank you for your contribution. We’ll pass the floor now to Ayman Mana from the Samir Kassir Foundation. Ayman, it’s great to see you again. I look forward to your reflections also as the most pressing risks and where you find signs of progress or hope.

Ayman Mhanna: Thank you, Sarah. Thank you very much for the invitation. Sorry for not being able to join you personally. The most pressing risk is the fact that civil society is asked to play a very important role in building coalitions, in cooperating with different actors, and in fighting effectively information manipulation, while civil society is now more than ever itself under attack, not only attacked by smear campaigns and disinformation campaigns that are building on the anti-elite sentiment, on the conspiracy theories related to the hidden agendas and everything we very often hear, but also under attack by the funding cuts it’s experiencing all over the world. The US is very explicit about its strategy to cut funds for international development, but European countries are also going through significant budget cuts, while at the same time announcing that fighting information manipulation is a top priority. And another major challenge that civil society is facing in this context is the lack of clarity among the different other players, mainly donors, about what’s needed from the different players in the field of combating misinformation. Because in the context of funding cuts, and if I am a decision maker when it comes to funding programs in Brussels, in Paris, in the US, in London, it’s my priority to help sustain London, Paris, Copenhagen, Berlin-based organizations that work globally, or my objective is to actually fight against misinformation where it’s taking place on the ground. Sometimes these two objectives don’t coincide, because you need to actually cover salaries and taxes and rent in countries that are very expensive, which reduces the impact and effectiveness of what you can do on the ground. Sometimes also, and I do have maybe in another iteration of our discussion, I can read very explicitly, without necessarily mentioning the donor, a formal written answer by one of the major donors. on a program related to information manipulation and information integrity, telling us that our urge is to give the impression we are doing something more than necessarily the full effectiveness of the project. So these are some of the challenges. Funding cuts, smear campaigns, and disinformation campaigns against civil society, lack of clarity about the objectives of the donors, why we’re being asked to actually act in the most effective way to save democracy, to save human rights, and to save trust in societies. Otherwise, the whole fabric of the society will collapse. What to do? We’ll definitely also explore these ideas much further in the upcoming iteration. But it’s, once and for all, an ecosystemic approach to fighting for information integrity and for trust. And when I talk about ecosystemic approach, it’s not necessarily always through formal coalitions, but making sure that actors that have very often been excluded from the discussion, such as private sector, SMEs, people in the tech world, but not necessarily the big tech, but who are amazing engineers, amazing people in the tech sector and academia in different countries, how they can work effectively together with creative ideas, leveraging the different areas of experiences of the different players. And where silos and pre-prejudice from, for example, civil society organizations that are often left-wing leaning towards private sector and SMEs and people who are entrepreneurs in several sectors, how they can work together, bridging these gaps is today not only essential to win the fight for information integrity, but definitely to win the fight for trust and cohesive societies in countries where everything risks collapse. And I come from a country that has experienced war a few months ago from a region that went through a war situation just last week. Information and lack of trust in information was a fundamental weapon used by all belligerents. So imagine if this continues. Our entire society is at that risk. Thank you.

Moderator: Ayman, thank you very much for laying out those challenges that civil society is facing from the geopolitical to the institutional and a whole spectrum, and then sort of honing in on, indeed, that topic that we’re here to discuss in more depth, that ecosystemic approach and how we can build coalitions for collective action. We’re turning now again to the room, to Gisela. What do you see as the most pressing risks? And where do you find signs of progress or hope?

Gisella Lomax: Thank you very much, Sarah, and thank you for inviting me to take part in this important event. And I echo your words at the beginning that the amount that we’ve seen information integrity on this IGF program really is very encouraging. And I would say that in the first instance, although the challenges are huge. This is the first internet governance forum I’ve attended. I lead UNHCR’s information integrity capacity. If anybody is unfamiliar with UNHCR, who’s probably not one of the best-known players in the Internet governance ecosystem, although we have been present for many years, we’re one of the UN’s largest humanitarian organizations with a refugee protection mandate, working in 133 countries around the world to protect the world’s refugees, forcibly displaced and stateless communities, which I think we recently announced is around 128 million people. So a word on the threats to start with. Threats to information integrity on digital platforms, especially such as misinformation, disinformation and hate speech, are very much correlating and causing and leading to real-world harm, especially in war, conflict, emergency, humanitarian settings. And whilst I feel that there’s a good amount, never enough, but a good amount of attention to the issues of information integrity in elections and public health, we’d like to see a bit more attention to the humanitarian dimensions and that’s part of what brings me here this week. So we see harm towards refugees, hate speech, inciting violence, people exploiting online spaces, spreading misinformation to deceive refugees with false promises of safety or employment, leading them into dangerous situations and also influencing public narratives to become even more hostile and polarized, framing refugees as security, economic or cultural threats and in turn influencing public policy. And of course new and emerging tech is transforming that, but I won’t get too much into that, perhaps in the questions. I would also say that we’re seeing challenges to humanitarian action itself. A survey we ran of UNHCR staff across some 85 countries found that 20% of our colleagues have directly and personally been targeted with myths and disinformation in the capacity of their role. So we’re seeing miscoordinated, false narratives, misinformation, which is practically preventing or hampering the delivery of often life-saving aids, restricting access, eroding trust in humanitarian actors, undermining our credibility and impartiality as well. But there are opportunities to strengthen digital protection, which is how we frame this work, protecting refugees in the digital sphere and the real world and the correlation between. Improving access to reliable and life-saving information, that’s very much part of our work and our partners to provide trustworthy, credible information. And that’s hampered by misinformation in social media themes and algorithms that don’t promote the maybe less exciting and emotive, but frankly critical information. Upholding freedom of expression, true freedom of expression, is freedom of expression for everybody, including refugees, and of course the ability to receive information as well as to impart ideas, foster social cohesion, and to build digital resilience and trust. I’ll give some examples in the second part, but one thing I would say from our model at UNHCR, which is a combination of field-based pilot projects, practical work on the ground, and then a small headquarters capacity, is that this can only be done, of course, in partnership. And we heard about funding cuts. The humanitarian sector has been dramatically affected by funding cuts, and as we have less, we have, of course, to be smarter, more efficient, to work collaboratively. There’s a lot of skill sets that perhaps do not have a natural home in humanitarian organizations, digital analysis, and so on. How do we partner with organizations that can share that skill set and expertise with us and share resources as well? Hopefully, I can speak a little bit more about some examples later on. Thank you.

Moderator: Great. Thank you very much, Gisela, for highlighting those aspects as it affects the humanitarian sector, and particularly refugees and displaced persons who are often amongst the most excluded on our globe and subject to abuse offline and online. We are going to turn back online now to Constanze Nehe from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Please go ahead.

Constanze Neher: Thank you, Sarah. Good afternoon, Sarah and colleagues. Good afternoon, everyone. I’m sorry that I can’t be with you in person, but I’m happy that I can be with you online. As Sarah said, I’m head of the Directorate in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development for general policy issues, and I’m far away from being an expert in information integrity, but I think information integrity is one of the main ongoing future challenges worldwide. Disinformation is not just noise in the digital space. It has become a structural threat to democratic governance and open societies. It undermines public trust, distorts political participation, restricts media freedom, and increasingly shrinks civic space. What we face is not just misinformation, but a strategic and calculated exploitation of digital spaces and tools for geopolitical influence, economic leverage, or the suppression of democratic voices. It is important to highlight this is not a technical issue, it is a governance challenge. To address this challenge, we need more than good intentions. We need effective and trusted coalitions. No single actor, not government platforms, nor civil society or media can tackle this threat alone, and I would add, nor the economy. From our work in partner countries, we have learned three core lessons. First, coalitions must be embedded in broader democratic reform efforts. Second, local ownership is non-negotiable. Only coalitions led and shaped by national actors will endure. Development partners must support. Third, context beats blueprint. What works in one country may fail in the other. Solutions must be rooted in local realities, political dynamics, and include all relevant actors. In this regard, we very much value our partnership. Together, we support meaningful national coalitions that reinforce information, ecosystems, and democratic norms, and engage in global discussions.

Moderator: Thank you very much indeed, and thank you for highlighting this aspect of it as a governance challenge that we are facing to democratic norms and human rights, and we also very much appreciate the partnership with you in this area, and look forward to the new set of national coalitions that together we can help support our national partners in putting together. I’m turning now back to the room, to Bojana from GFMD. Please go ahead.

Bojana Kostic: Yeah, good day everyone, and thank you. Thank you for having me on this session. Yes, today I’m speaking on behalf of Global Forum for Media Development. We are a member-based network of media development and journalism support organization, and to address your question, yeah, I think that we are living in a world that is boiling with pressing issues, and from the perspective of media and journalism, this can be actually best seen through this collision of power of interest, what was already mentioned by my co-panelists, with over the states with certain autocratic tendencies, and yeah, incredible political economic power of big tech companies. Yeah, and here I’m not only meaning like usual culprits like social media or search engines, but also those that actually own AI systems, own data storages, and basically run this whole data governance frameworks. As we all know, according to the latest Freedom House report, right, we are living in a world that is facing for 17, 18, sorry, executive years, democratic sliding and 2024 was the year where there’s a breadth and depth of this deterioration, which is a new level. And Sara, you already mentioned a few of the reasons why we are seeing this is like a behind rigged elections, armed conflicts, all sorts of different things that we are seeing, but also state leveraging their power to kind of capture the media. So as we can see, partly some of these problems that we are seeing in the world are connected to the lack of actual media pluralism, media viability, erosion of trust in media and all sorts of things. So to actually enable a kind of a right or safeguard information integrity is actually it means to kind of a safeguard media integrity, right? These two issues are intrinsically integrated and in kind of interconnected. And yes, signs of hopes, I think are everywhere. Like what my previous speakers just said, we are seeing in a numerous way, like how we work together. And this actually within the scope of the work of GFMD, working in partnership and cross collaboration is actually the way we work. And GFMD is one of the thematic lead actually of the team Europe Democracy Network Working Group 3 on media and media and digital. And with the support of the colleagues from GIZ and with the support of other civil society organizations and media freedom organizations, we are actually working jointly with all of them on developing a toolkit to support the implementation of the previously mentioned OECD principles on effective support for media. So the aim here is actually to help again to this cross collaboration, intersectoral collaboration, to help EU member states, to help the EU institutions integrate these principles that are themselves also developed through partnerships into their policies, into their democratic institutions and to ensure that actually information integrity as such, but also, as I said, as a bedrock of it, media freedom actually becomes a pillar of the way we kind of address information integrity issues again. And this can be only done through collaboration. I will address a few more examples in the second question. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, and I realized I used an acronym that not everybody may be familiar with. You brought why media are central to this discussion in your contribution, but GFMD is the Global Forum for Media Development. Do you just want to say one word of what that is for those who are not familiar with it? Yeah, for sure. As I said, we are a network of 200 members that are working on issues related to safeguarding media availability in particular, and trying to kind of address different funding problems, trying to kind of change the narrative on the ways the funding are being governed and run, and actually make sure that this is done through collaboration and kind of raising up from this bottom-up approach. But I will actually explain a bit more about the way we work in my second.

Moderator: Great, and thank you so much for bringing that voice to our conversation this afternoon. And last of this round, but very much not least, we have Francesca Scarpola from TikTok. Please go ahead.

Francesca Scapolo: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for the opportunity to join such incredible panelists today and share a little bit more about the challenges that we see as a platform in terms of information integrity, but also the increasingly important roles that platforms like TikTok play when it comes to safeguarding information integrity through multi-stakeholder collaboration. I would say that we saw on our side that platforms have become, the TikTok and similar platform stories have shifted from passive observers to active partners when it comes to protecting information integrity. So, on our side, we have expanded a lot our collaboration with different partners, those being fact-checkers, independent fact-checkers, but civil society organizations, and also governments, and governments in trying to really tackle misinformation and disinformation. When it comes to the biggest challenges that we see, on our side, I would say that these are missing this information, but also covering influence operation. We have established strong rules against actors that are trying to manipulate information on our platform ahead of elections, but also ahead of like other civil moments. And we also have established different strategies to make sure that we engage constantly with different actors, because we value partnership and collaboration. This is in fact one of our key pillars when it comes, for example, to protect elections integrity. And it’s something that we value very much. We have established, for example, local safety advisory councils, which are groups of academic and civil society leaders that advise us on policy matters and really help us anticipate emerging threats within our community. We know that this is an evolving field and there is more to come. We’ve seen different examples through various elections across the globe. And we’re always trying to make sure that we stay ahead of different life threats and we keep improving our platform.

Moderator: What experience have been some of the mechanisms that have proven most effective in fostering this collaboration across sectors that you mentioned?

Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza: Okay, thank you for the questions. First, I would like to mention that our unity against this information within the Attorney General’s Office, known by the acronym PNDD in Portuguese for National Prosecution for Defense of Democracy, has its DNA driven by principles of collaboration and social participation. This calls for instance the unity was effectively established in the first semester of 2023 following a broad public consultation on its limits and provisions. At that time, more than 80 specialists from civil society, from academia, practitioners and fact-checking agents contributed as a formal work group to guide its implementation. That was a valuable mechanism. And similarly, last January, AGU conducted a public hearing to examine the implications of matters, policies, content moderation shifts, particularly those related to hate speech and fact-checking activities. Such inputs coming from different actors were fully presented before the Supreme Court. evidence for our disabled actors who participate there. I think that’s the one important part for constitutional technical briefing. Additionally, the third means cooperation agreements have provided substantial evidence for legal action. We have signed a memorandum of understanding with leading research institutes and universities. We have just confirmed the membership on digital platforms in Bolivia and Colombia. These action use public figures was built on this type of partnership. Digital platforms are also actors with whom we seek to collaborate. This way, during last year’s massive summit, we have been able to understand the importance of digital platforms and how they can play an important role in addressing some aspects that threaten the public service and government response during the extreme weather events. At the international level, it’s worth noting that following the last G20 summit, Brazil is leading a global initiative on information integrity, on climate change, alongside UNESCO, U.N., and countries following the study of their ungling, doses. This is important. Our next steps, new actions related to environment, especially considering the upcoming COP 30 in Brazil. But it’s clear contemporary information security challenges must be addressed by the international community. We need to make sure that we have international, cross-sector, and cross-border partnerships to this end.

Moderator: Thank you very much for being very practical in your answer. And outlining very practical mechanisms, walking groups, public hearings, coalitions. be many other countries present who will want to ask questions about that and learn from the Brazilian experience. That’s very helpful. Thank you. We’re going back online to Constanze for the next question. And in your first intervention, you talked about, you know, how information integrity is essential for democratic governance and democratic development in all contexts, including in the global south. And what have been the most effective tools that you have found to help defend democracy in these contexts?

Constanze Neher: Yeah. Thank you so much, Sarah, for this question. Maybe let me clarify first one thing, and you already mentioned it. It’s not only about the global south, but strengthening information integrity is essential for democracy worldwide. And I think we should look a bit at the interconnectedness of the issues. And strengthening information integrity is not a technical task. It’s a democratic necessity, I would say. Without access to trusted, pluralistic information, citizens cannot make informed decisions, hold governments to account, or resist manipulation. In short, no integrity, no democratic legitimacy. This information is not an unavoidable disturbance. In our digital systems, it is a targeted strategy. In authoritarian contexts, it is used to support, dissent, and silence journalists, human rights defenders, and civic voices. In democracy, it erodes electoral trust, fuels division, and weakens civic space. We noticed that in Germany, too. And this often has a general component. Women in public life are disproportionately affected by disinformation and hate speech. In many of our partner countries, we were witnessing the strategic use of disinformation as a tool of disruption. Just let me put an example. In Africa, more than 60% of major disinformation campaigns are reportedly financed by foreign state actors, or, I would add, by strategically used private actors. I’m just bearing in mind disinformation campaigns against LGBTQ rights in Kenya or Ghana, fueled by U.S.-based evangelical groups. We observe how these campaigns undermine electoral processes, fuel hate speech, and deepen social divides. And in fragile democracies, the consequences are particularly severe. It affects political stability, public safety, and social cohesion. If you want to defend democracy… it needs more than open elections. It needs open information environments. So strengthening information integrity is one effective way to protect civic space, counter-democratic backsliding, and enable democratic innovation. And partnerships, when rooted in trust, ownership, and a clear purpose, are key to delivering that. From our work in partnerships, four strategic approaches stand out, I think. First, advanced media and information literacy at all levels, not just for users, but for policymakers, I would include myself, civil society, educators, and influencers. Understanding how narratives are shaped is essential to respond constructively. Second, support smart regulation with safeguards. Regulation is needed, but must be designed to protect democratic values and freedom of expression. The aim is accountability, not censorship. Third, strengthen public interest media. Independent journalism remains one of the strongest means against disinformation. It requires stable financing, legal protection, and public trust. And fourth, invest in meaningful coalitions. We heard a lot about examples how you work in effective coalitions, how you work jointly. Just to put an example, in West Africa, we support multi-stakeholder observatories that connect governments, media, regulators, and civil society. And these platforms build evidence, strengthen institutional capacity, and promote coordinated responses to online harms. And maybe as it was mentioned earlier, we support the Team Europe Democracy Initiative. We have shared approaches and peer exchange around digital democracy, media freedom, and protect of human rights. It’s about the Working Group 3, my colleague mentioned earlier. And we also work on the topic with our strong, you might know them, and German government-financed DW Academy. Especially after the shutdown of USAID and the consequent withdrawal of funds, DW Academy definitely is a crucial actor in international media development, really seeks to work in coalition and to work jointly. So thank you.

Moderator: Thank you very much, Constanze, and for highlighting again that transnational element, as well as the fact that these issues affect all contexts, and dynamics in one stage or on the international stage can then be played out in a variety of different contexts. And thank Germany again for decades of support to this field of public interest media, including through the DW Academy and many other initiatives. So I’m turning now again to Bojana, who I’m sure is delighted that Constanze has set the stage for what I imagine she may wish to say.

Bojana Kostic: Thanks. Yes, I truly am. And thank you so much, Constanze, for kind of lazing up this here. So at GFMD, we believe that a future of sustainable funding, a support for independent media must be rooted in local agency, as Constanze also said, and systemic transformation, right? So our work is fundamentally about shifting both narrative and power. So moving away from these top-down models and instead enabling these grassroots leadership, shaping information ecosystems that affect their communities most, like keeping it local. So there are two principles, going back to your question before, Sarah, like there are two principles that emerge in the work. It’s like a bottom-up empowerment, so we want to see more of these local responses to regional solidarity, to kind of lift them all up. So the way we start, we start by listening to a very participatory approach. Our support to our member like Ayman Manna, co-panelist at the Samir Kassir Foundation, exemplifies this. In the wake of the Beirut port explosion, Ayman and his colleague launched a uniquely community responsive media fund tailored to Lebanese context. And GFMD helped by bringing in the to listen people closest to the story, turning this ad hoc emergency grants into something that this community design, right, and govern pooled fund. Also, with Ayman and other Ukrainian colleagues recently, we articulated an event organized with Syracuse UNDP colleagues, right, where we build the trust and information integrity and try to strengthen these community ties and long-term and localized investment. This is really important if we are to see this bridging between all different actors and their different interests, but also like all different human rights that we are also trying to address here in this way. A second kind of a principle of multistakeholder partnerships and collaboration is building alternatives and innovating beyond traditional funding and governance. By shifting power means going, as I said, beyond existing donor funders and coordinations. We believe, actually, that bottom-up coordination with the new collective-owned infrastructure, so that independent media are not just funded, but they can also set the agenda, own the tools, and drive their own long-term sustainability. And the JFMD, with other partners, we are working on the journalism cloud alliance, is one such initiative. It’s an open cooperative platform that rethink the cloud infrastructure that is a digital backbone of independent journalism. So, by prioritizing interoperability, shared ownership, public interest governance, we are moving away from these dependencies that exist on big tech companies that I mentioned, and extractive tools, and giving journalists and media public goods in their own hands, and not the other way around. So, in doing so, we are actually challenging this assumption that underpins these traditional donor-driven models. So, rather than replicating hierarchies, we are embedding equity in co-creation and sustainability in the very tools and infrastructure that media use every day. So, it’s an alternative way of thinking of it.

Moderator: Thank you very much indeed for highlighting those elements of how actually many actors are coming together to try to shift these power dynamics, as we see power getting concentrated across the world in certain actors, and in certain ways that also feeds in often to geopolitical interests, that actually there are alternatives to that, and that many here, here in Lillestorm, are actually talking, that’s what we’re talking about this week. So thank you so much for bringing that perspective. So now we’re going back online, back to Francesca from TikTok. So from TikTok’s standpoint, how do you see the role of tech platforms evolving within multi-stakeholder coalitions on information integrity? Do you have any specific examples where your collaboration with coalitions has led to measurable improvements in electoral integrity or information resilience?

Francesca Scapolo: Yes, and thank you for your questions. I mentioned this briefly before, but I would say that in recent years, TikToks, and I could also extend this to platforms in general, have shifted from being passive observers to really active partners when it comes to protecting information integrity through collections, but also through general partnership. We all see that tackling misinformation and disinformation really requires coordinated actions and bringing together platforms, government, civil society organization, and independent fact checkers to try to pursue a common mission. On our side at TikTok, we have reinforced our moderation efforts through partnerships with over 20 global fact checking bodies. And together, we work with them to identify and also swiftly remove misleading content, including AI-generated one, whether false claims about election dates or attempts at voter suppression. And these are just examples. But this extends beyond election integrity efforts and to everything that is considered a harmful misinformation on our platform. And alongside this, we also launched targeted media literacy campaigns, working closely with civil society organizations. And we also roll out in-app election center across not only Europe, but worldwide. And these apps are really important because they deliver reliable information and try to equip users with tools to critically assess content. But I will say that this is just part of the work that we are doing when it comes to collaborating with different partners and coalition. on election integrity, because a cornerstone of our strategy is our continuous engagement with what I mentioned before, that is our local safety advisory councils, which is a group, again, of academic and civil society leaders who advise us on policy matters and really help us anticipate emerging threats within our community. But just to give you a few examples of how this cooperative approach was panned out and is like our work around the 2024 European Parliament elections. So in partnership with electoral commissions, but also civil society groups and fact-checking networks, we launched in-app election centre in all the 27 EU member states. And these apps really offer verified guidance on voting procedures and also media literacy campaigns. And those was supported by thousands of moderators, fluent in local languages, really enabling swift and accurate response to specific risk to the elections. And the impact on our side was clear because those election centres were viewed over 7.5 million times in the four weeks around the elections. And in addition to that, we also set up search banners where people, when searching for election video, they were redirected to these in-app elections. But this was also in addition to our work around removing harmful misinformation. And I can share that more than 200,000 videos violating our misinformation policies were removed and over 96% proactively, with 80% being taken down before any view. So this was also like our work and example on European side. But our efforts very much extend far beyond Europe. And I’m happy to share a little bit more also about what we did ahead of the South Africa 2024 elections. where we work closely with the Independent Electoral Commission and civil society partners, such as Africa Check and Code for Africa. And in that specific case, we established an election task force with experts from our internal teams, but also we launched a multilingual in-app election center, and that included also sign language, and also implemented various media literacy campaigns, and these also include videos, sign language videos, to try to reach diverse audiences. So I would say that platforms like TikTok now play a more and more important role when it comes to multi-stakeholders coalition to really build information resilience. And on our side, by trying to combine a proactive moderation, but also media literacy, transparency engagement, and really trusted partnership, we have seen measurable results with millions of election center visits, proactive removals, and really impactful regional interventions. And really these efforts demonstrate that when we unite behind a shared purpose across platforms, institutions, but also civil society, we can fully strengthen the integrity of our democratic information environment.

Moderator: Thanks so much Francesca, and for bringing those specific examples as well that show how this multi-stakeholder approach, where the platforms are also engaged, along with civil society and electoral, in the case of elections, electoral bodies as well, can really affect the information environment and the information ecosystem around elections. We’re coming back to the room now, to Gisela. You spoke in your first intervention about, you know, the humanitarian context where much of your work is done. In crisis-affected settings, as you noted, disinformation can deepen risks and undermine trust. How do you think the UN and humanitarian actors can take a stronger role in working with platforms and other actors to protect information integrity, especially where communities are hardest to reach?

Gisella Lomax: Well, thanks very much Sarah. I think maybe to start with, certainly the UN system is very much seized with the issue, and I think as Raphael, I think you mentioned either the Global Digital Compact or the Global Principles and Information Integrity. These are obviously two key instruments, and we’re very pleased that refugees were specifically mentioned in the Global Digital Compact and the section Information Integrity. In the humanitarian sector, as I’ve really emphasised, this is a grave concern, but frankly we do have massive challenges. I think everyone’s probably aware of the financial issues, the funding issues we’re facing, and so I will be frank that we’re looking for more support to continue to ramp up this work in a collective way. But perhaps I could give just some examples of how we’re working. I think as Constanza said, emphasising the importance of local context, and I also heard another speaker talk about grassroots upwards, I think that was you. Local is core to our response and simultaneously we’re talking about a small number of global social media digital platforms operating largely in the same way regardless of context, yet the response has to be contextually specific and so we’re looking at coalitions and partnerships that are local, playing into regional, including governance bodies, playing into global, including engaging with these global platforms. I would say, you know, I think taking a local to global advocacy point, that people who use social media in less common languages, in non-commercial markets for these companies, war zones where they are not selling advertising, are disproportionately at risk, you know, for various ways and on this we do have a need and we’re trying to do this at UNHCR to collect examples and case studies that we can then bring to fora like this and bring to the platforms in a strategic and aligned way. But in terms of partnerships, I’ll give a couple of examples. I mentioned local and I’ll also say community first and so working with affected communities, with refugees themselves. I mentioned a survey we did of UNHCR personnel and another question there asked how many of our colleagues know of refugees and refugee-led organisations themselves taking direct action to strengthen information integrity and more than 30% of our colleagues knew explicitly of refugee-led organisations. They’re not waiting around for us, people are already acting and I’m sure that percentage is actually way higher and so how can we better support communities themselves in refugee camps in humanitarian contexts and I see that very strongly as part of our role. So we’ve been working with refugee groups and especially women, I think Constanza also mentioned that gender dimension, time and again, place after place, women and girls are also disproportionately affected. I mentioned in my earlier intervention the point about skill sets. For us, we’ve really had some promising partnerships with digital rights organisations such as the Association for Progressive Communications, if I might give a flag to one of our partners. Academia as well, governments of course, we’re a member state organisation and I can see as I’m on the panel with Brazil, I’d like to say at the New York level for the last three years, Brazil has co-organised a Protection of Civilians Week event on information integrity which has been very important for bringing these examples up to policy makers at the New York level. I’d also like to highlight the government of South Africa. Yesterday, some of my colleagues had a dynamic session presenting a pilot project we’re working on with the government of South Africa to tackle xenophobia and misinformation towards refugees and migrants and I’m pleased to say our partner’s actually in the room if you’d like to know more. I won’t repeat what was said in the session but we’re very proud of this positive and constructive example. But perhaps before I close and I can see the clock coming to tech, digital platforms dominate the world’s information ecosystems and with great power comes great responsibility. They have an outsized responsibility act to act, including in places that there’s not a commercial imperative or a regulatory reason to do so. We work closely, we try to work closely with these platforms but we are very… worried by the weakening in guardrails and the reduction in trust and safety capacities. And so we really do encourage the platforms to continue to come to the table and engage and share information and especially around early warning systems or consulting communities on policy development. We’re here, we’re open to partner and I think this is a really important need we all need to press for. Thank you.

Moderator: Great, thank you very much. And if I can take my moderator hat off for a moment and comment in relation to your comment about the less common languages or the context in which money is not being generated for technology platforms because advertising is not considered a priority there, that we have also consistently saw that the attention to the information integrity and the response from platforms in those contexts has been very different from perhaps the focus that there is in Europe or elsewhere. But thank you for giving those very useful examples of what you’re doing and also reminding us all that what the UN system and global actors can do is always in support of those who are already taking action in that context. So we’re coming to our last speaker and I hope we’ll have time to open up for questions shortly so please be thinking about those. We’re going back to Ayman for the last panel intervention and I’ve done well with all my paperwork until this moment. Here we are. From a civil society perspective, what are some of the key challenges and the needs civil society actors face in participating in some of these collective action and these collaborations? You mentioned some of them in your first intervention. Perhaps you’d like to go a little bit deeper into that. Thanks.

Ayman Mhanna: Thanks. I mean I’d place my last answer under the umbrella of walking the talk because we’ve tried so many instruments. Fact-checking, yes, is very important. It should be embedded in the role of every journalist but at the same time we know that it depends on the whims very often of the platforms whether or not to give visibility to the fact-checking responses information that is purely incorrect is spread and how much they have to actually boost their content to have like some visibility whereas horrible content may spread organically in terrible ways and then the policies can change and given also the level of polarization of society, you can show all the facts and all the numbers we don’t necessarily have evidence that can sway significantly people who have already made up their mind. We speak about media information literacy. Let’s actually look at the numbers. I’m a number person. 2024 oversee development aids to roughly 212 billion dollars. It’s a 7% decline from 2023. Do you know out of these 212 billion, how much has gone to media information environment, media development, independent media, journalism training, press freedom, digital literacy, journalist safety, etc? It’s around 0.5% of the 212 billion. So we’re talking about nearly 400 million dollars and if we basically so 0.19% because the rest is infrastructure costs like broadband, etc. 400 million dollars, let’s compare it to the annual budget of Russia today. 600 million dollars. Let’s compare it to the budget of the Iranian international TV system. That was 1 billion dollar a year. So all donors in the world combined to support everything we spoke about with a lot of good intentions are only given 400 million dollars a year. And out of which less than 1% is going to media information literacy. So we can have all these beautiful small projects in schools here and there. It’s nothing compared to the budgets that are placed by those who are actively polluting the information ecosystem. So as long as we are not aware of like the tail of the fight we’re talking about, we remain at the level of good intentions. And this is what’s painful for civil society organization. We are asked to do so much while the means made available are laughable. I’m sorry for being so blunt. This is why it’s a different approach that we’re hoping for, where we need to do so much better with so much less, not more with less. And this is why I go back and close with my issue of an ecosystemic approach. I cannot believe that people who work in the hospitality sector, in the craft sector, in industry, in trade and who are not necessarily part of our world and our conversations are happy with a democracy or a political system where everything is collapsing. But how can we engage with them specifically for them to place their advertisement where actually independent media is doing a good job? How to actually bring organic money from the society to the fight for a better society and for better information? This is one of the key tracks we should be looking into. Same, how can we leverage the most important and smart brains in our academic circles and our research circles who are working with artificial intelligence not only to import and adapt systems that major companies are launching but what if we can develop local predictive algorithms to detect early on campaigns that are still in the making and be able to fight them way before they reach the scale they typically reach. This is why I go back always to the idea of working across the aisle not with our opponents, across the aisle with people who are not today attending this conference, who we do not see in the media development conferences and the international aid conferences and the development conferences. The key to the solution resides in building bridges with them because if we only want to rely on donor-grantee relationship one, the budgets are decreasing. Two, the budgets, even if they were not decreasing, are nowhere near what is needed to even engage in the beginning of a fight compared to what the nefarious actors are doing. So this would be my call and hope I can at least find allies among so many of the participants to think about it more deeply together in the coming weeks and months.

Moderator: Thanks so much, Ayman. That’s a great way to wrap up the panel part with a call to all of us to branch out. We talk about coalitions but to think creatively also about others who need to be in those coalitions. We have about six or seven minutes for questions, maybe five, so that we have a chance to go back to the panel for some responses. If you are in the room and you would like to ask a question, please line up at the microphone. I gather there are a couple of questions online if we have time. So let’s go to the lady at the microphone. Please introduce yourself as well.

Audience: Thank you. Nice to meet you. I’m Silvia Cadena, World Wide Web Consortium. I’m Chief Development Officer. It’s really fantastic to hear the concern and work around building coalitions on information integrity, and I just wanted to point out that the technical community has been working a lot on provenance of information to be able to assist different new software, new tools to identify the reliability and the integrity of information that exists on databases and in different applications on the web. So I would like to call also the organizations that are supporting these creators, these content creators, to just refer to the W3C specifications to be able to incorporate those into how they create content, not only so that that content is rendered correctly according to cultures and languages, also to be accessible for people for disabilities and also interact with any platforms or tools for assistive technologies, but also to assist in information integrity. There is a lot of effort on personal IDs, wallets, payments, transactions, and all of those technologies are starting to interplay with other content that exists in relation to how you pay. participate in democracy. So it’s very important that the creators of this content use the standards, the metadata, the attributes of all the coding when they do, so that when someone is trying to help make assurances that that content exists, it is possible to do so. It is also important for when organizations are pulling content to train AI models, the more that content is categorized utilizing the existing standards, the more accurate that model will be in assessing and assisting mapping that information. So I know standards may not be the most sexy component in the room, but I always want to remind people that it’s very relevant to the work that coalitions are doing, that there are technical tools that creators and designers can use, that publishers can use, just to make sure that the content is relevant and easily accessible, and that the technology that exists to manage it can assist in that process. We are around the rest of the week. We are an email away, so please search for us, and we’ll be very happy to explain some more about what we do. Thank you.

Moderator: Thank you so much. That’s a very important contribution, and I’ve just learned something. Yes, please go ahead in the room.

Audience: Can I directly? OK. My name is Jan Lublinsky. I work for DW Academy, so one of the larger media development organizations. I’m still a bit blown away by what Ayman just said, because I think he really expressed the urgency of what we’re discussing here. And I can only congratulate you, Sarah, for this panel, because this is what we hope of the IGF to be, to have a multistakeholder dialogue that is really focused on burning issues, and also really targeted towards focusing on what can be done, and not just only exchanging, but really thinking of what do we need to do. So I have a small comment, but then also a question that is then for Gisela. One observation in coalition building from my side, I think at the moment we’re good in building coalitions now that the money is being shortened, and we are in dramatic crisis situations. We’re good at cooperating with the people we know well, with our own expert communities, and our own communities of, in my case, media development, and GFMD, and so on. It’s much harder than to bridge the gap to the neighbor communities. I’ll give you two examples. There’s the Media Freedom Coalition, and I’m engaged in the CN, the consultative network with civil society. But talking to the legal experts, it’s so much harder. Talking to the foreign ministries and their groups, although this should be a multi-stakeholder process, the Media Freedom Coalition, it’s really hard to actually do that. Same thing for the Europe Democracy Initiative. We have three working groups, but these three working groups, one is on legal institutions, one is on civil society, one is on media and digital, but they should be talking to each other, because democracy is not about individual silos, and this is quite a challenge. My last comment, and this goes then to Gisela, is that I think we need the media development community and the community that works in communication and disaster-affected communities to come together. And we’re trying to do that in December, we’re hosting in Bonn at Deutsche Welle the annual meeting of the SIDAC network, but also a media development community, the former media development network meeting, so both in the same week, and we really want to make the effort to bring these communities together. But it’s not easy, it’s not just an individual conversation, because there are gaps and differences in understanding what needs to be done to take on board local communities in situations of crisis and really engage for refugees, as you rightly pointed out. So my question to you, Gisela, is what is important to bridge this gap in the case of humanitarian aid communication and media development, what do you think are the things we should be doing?

Moderator: Thank you, sorry to cut in, we have two more questions in the room, and then I’m afraid we’ll close the questions, apologies to people online, but I will hand back to the panel for one minute, kind of before we close. Please go ahead in the room.

Audience: Hi, my name is Yu Jie, I worked for one social media company before, so in one of my research in information integrity last year, this question is related to the resource of fact-checking resources. So I looked at IFC and not authorised fact-checking organisations, and found out at least by when I looked at it, none of them are from, based in Russia or China, and in fact there’s a lot of information actually also around these two countries. So my question, maybe to better, maybe address to the lady from the TikTok, is when you choose the partners from about the fact-checking organizations. How do you evaluate the geological coverage or maybe, for example, the fact-checking resources on a special group like refugees? I’m just curious, maybe do you find out there might be enough resources for some groups or some countries or some facts?

Moderator: Thank you. Just the last question to the gentleman behind you, in as short as you can make it, please.

Audience: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Raul Manuel, a member of parliament in the Philippines, representing the Youth Party. So my question is, can our resource persons share some of the best practices as to how the multi-stakeholder model can really be implemented in the context of elections? Because in the case of the Philippines, what we often have is more on bilateral. It’s like the commission on elections with the media, the commission on elections with the big tech companies, but it’s not really multi-stakeholder. So any insights?

Moderator: Thank you. Thank you. And we can certainly follow up with you on that afterwards, if there isn’t time with the panel. Now, the clock has turned red, which I find very stressful. So I will turn to any of the panel members. Francesca, there was a specific question to you, plus any others who wish to make a comment, but don’t feel pressured. So I’ll take just two minutes at the end to wrap up. So Francesca, do you want to answer that question?

Francesca Scapolo: Yes, absolutely. So on our side, we work with 21 fact-checkers that are all accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network. So we understand one of our key aspects when we evaluate partnerships and coalition is trying to lean locally. So for us, it’s very important when we evaluate potential partnerships with fact-checkers to understand that they have capacity locally to really support our team and really support our work. So we do a thorough assessment, but I also want to, and I think this is very important, I also want to stress that we do not just part partners with fact-checkers, but also with local civil society organizations. So when we launch, for example, media literacy campaigns, we generally, like, try to reach out to local organizations and try to collaborate with them. So it’s a very extensive and holistic approach that we use to make sure that we very much look into, like, all these—all the context that you mentioned, make sure that we cover as much as possible and give a voice to everyone on our platforms and make sure that we have all the resources available to support our community on that.

Moderator: Thanks very much, Francesca. Bojana has passed on a final remark, so Giselle, would you like to say something?

Gisella Lomax: Yes, very quickly to the question on media development, and I did have that in my talking points, so I didn’t have space, so I’m really grateful for the question from our fellow member of the CDAC network, Deutsche Welle Academy, who does outstanding work, and please count on us to join you in Bonn, I hope. I think what’s missing is even more inclusion of communities, of course. Context is everything. I’m preaching to the converted, but still, let’s try to mobilize that together. I would also say speed, and something inspiring, there’s an organization, a Norwegian organization I met this week, they have a stand in the marketplace, they’re called Faktisk, sorry to Norwegians in the room for the pronunciation, a fact-checking organization linked to a digital literacy arm called TENK, sorry, my Norwegian is still not very good after five days in Oslo. Anyway, I was so impressed, within days of fact-checking misinformation, they have it on the curriculum in the classrooms. I think a three-day turnaround from a major event, spinning out misinformation, so the teachers are given the tools to talk to the children, that is outstanding, go and visit them, we need more of that. Back to you, Sarah.

Moderator: Thank you. Constanze, would you like to make a final remark? I’m in shaking his head, I’ve never seen that before.

Constanze Neher: So I would just make a very brief final remark. I’d really take with me Ayman’s call for action and for action of media viability to support media viability and organic funding from societies itself because I think we saw with the withdrawal of the U.S. funding where it leads to and how really the whole sector, the international media development depends on international funding and I just want to show that we as Germany via the Deutsche Welle Academy and GIZ and our partnerships I mentioned before we will stay engaged but we also suffer cuts so it’s working better together and I really take with me, I quoted what Ayman said, he said, I have to do so much better with so much less so that’s my lesson, my takeaway. Thank you so much.

Moderator: Dr. Raphael, in 30 seconds.

Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza: Consider all the challenges mentioned today I do believe again that we need a mixed approach combining cooperation, education and liabilities to achieve an effective information environment. Thank you.

Moderator: We have come to the end of our time. I don’t really have time to wrap up more than to say I think we’ve heard that coalitions of all sorts at all levels are the way forward, that actually working at local levels is super important and we need to be looking outside even beyond coalitions to those that we don’t normally invite to coalitions. So I will just finalise by thanking all the panellists with me in the room and online. Jan was very gracious in congratulating me but honestly I had little to do with this panel except showing up. I would like to thank the team and our partners in Germany and Brazil for putting it together and thank the tech team for taking us through this session. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye!

Agreement points

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential for addressing information integrity challenges

Speakers

– Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza
– Constanze Neher
– Ayman Mhanna
– Gisella Lomax
– Francesca Scapolo
– Bojana Kostic
– Moderator

Arguments

Brazil’s prosecution unit was established through broad public consultation with over 80 specialists from civil society, academia, and fact-checking organizations

Effective coalitions require local ownership, context-specific solutions, and embedding in broader democratic reform efforts

An ecosystemic approach is needed that bridges gaps between different sectors, including private sector SMEs and tech professionals not typically included in discussions

UNHCR works through partnerships with digital rights organizations, academia, and governments, emphasizing community-first approaches with refugee-led organizations

Platforms have shifted from passive observers to active partners in protecting information integrity through coordinated actions

Bottom-up empowerment and participatory approaches are essential, moving away from top-down donor-driven models

No single actor can address information integrity challenges alone, requiring collaboration between international organizations, governments, platforms, and civil society

Summary

All speakers agreed that information integrity challenges are too complex for any single actor to address alone, requiring coordinated multi-stakeholder approaches that include governments, civil society, platforms, academia, and international organizations working together.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights | Sociocultural | Development

Local context and community-centered approaches are crucial for effective solutions

Speakers

– Constanze Neher
– Ayman Mhanna
– Gisella Lomax
– Francesca Scapolo
– Bojana Kostic

Arguments

Effective coalitions require local ownership, context-specific solutions, and embedding in broader democratic reform efforts

An ecosystemic approach is needed that bridges gaps between different sectors, including private sector SMEs and tech professionals not typically included in discussions

Over 30% of UNHCR colleagues know of refugee-led organizations taking direct action on information integrity, showing communities are already acting independently

Fact-checking partnerships require thorough assessment of local capacity and collaboration with local civil society organizations

Bottom-up empowerment and participatory approaches are essential, moving away from top-down donor-driven models

Summary

Speakers consistently emphasized that effective information integrity solutions must be rooted in local contexts, led by local actors, and designed with community participation rather than imposed through top-down approaches.

Topics

Development | Sociocultural | Human rights

Information integrity threats pose serious risks to democratic governance and human rights

Speakers

– Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza
– Constanze Neher
– Ayman Mhanna
– Gisella Lomax
– Bojana Kostic
– Moderator

Arguments

AI and emerging technologies are accelerating the spread and sophistication of harmful content, making disinformation creation cheaper, easier, and faster

Disinformation has become a structural threat to democratic governance, undermining public trust and distorting political participation

Civil society organizations face funding cuts while being asked to play crucial roles in fighting information manipulation

Information integrity threats in humanitarian settings cause real-world harm to refugees and displaced populations through hate speech and misinformation

Media pluralism and viability are eroding, which directly impacts information integrity since these issues are intrinsically interconnected

Information integrity is no longer a niche tech issue but sits at the heart of protecting trust, participation, and democracy in the digital age

Summary

All speakers recognized that information integrity challenges represent fundamental threats to democratic systems, human rights, and social cohesion, with real-world consequences for vulnerable populations and democratic processes.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights | Sociocultural | Cybersecurity

Platforms have significant responsibilities but face challenges in global implementation

Speakers

– Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza
– Gisella Lomax
– Francesca Scapolo

Arguments

Platforms must be held accountable and transparent while respecting human rights, with some cases requiring liability for third-party harmful content

There are concerns about weakening guardrails and reduction in trust and safety capacities at major platforms

Platforms operating in less common languages and non-commercial markets disproportionately put users at risk due to reduced attention

Platforms have shifted from passive observers to active partners in protecting information integrity through coordinated actions

Summary

Speakers agreed that platforms have significant responsibilities for information integrity but face implementation challenges, particularly in non-commercial markets and less common languages, while needing to balance accountability with human rights protections.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights | Cybersecurity

Similar viewpoints

All three speakers highlighted the severe funding challenges facing organizations working on information integrity, with cuts in development aid and humanitarian funding occurring precisely when these issues require more attention and resources.

Speakers

– Ayman Mhanna
– Gisella Lomax
– Constanze Neher

Arguments

Civil society organizations face funding cuts while being asked to play crucial roles in fighting information manipulation

Humanitarian sector faces massive funding challenges that limit ability to address information integrity issues

Only 0.19% of global development aid ($400 million out of $212 billion) goes to media development and information integrity, compared to much larger budgets of malicious actors

Topics

Development | Human rights

Both speakers emphasized the need for regulatory approaches that balance accountability and protection from harm with preservation of fundamental rights like freedom of expression, avoiding censorship while ensuring democratic values are protected.

Speakers

– Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza
– Constanze Neher

Arguments

Brazil is developing enforcement strategies that balance freedom of expression with protection from harmful content, following international human rights standards

Smart regulation with safeguards is needed to protect democratic values while avoiding censorship

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights

Both speakers advocated for innovative approaches that move beyond traditional models, emphasizing the need to engage new actors and create alternative infrastructure that reduces dependence on big tech companies while fostering broader collaboration.

Speakers

– Ayman Mhanna
– Bojana Kostic

Arguments

An ecosystemic approach is needed that bridges gaps between different sectors, including private sector SMEs and tech professionals not typically included in discussions

The Journalism Cloud Alliance represents an alternative cooperative platform approach that prioritizes shared ownership and public interest governance over big tech dependencies

Topics

Economic | Infrastructure | Sociocultural

Unexpected consensus

Platform responsibility and engagement across different stakeholder perspectives

Speakers

– Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza
– Gisella Lomax
– Francesca Scapolo

Arguments

Platforms must be held accountable and transparent while respecting human rights, with some cases requiring liability for third-party harmful content

There are concerns about weakening guardrails and reduction in trust and safety capacities at major platforms

Platforms have shifted from passive observers to active partners in protecting information integrity through coordinated actions

Explanation

It was unexpected to see such alignment between a government prosecutor, a UN humanitarian official, and a platform representative on the need for platform accountability and responsibility. Despite their different institutional perspectives, they shared concerns about platform responsibilities and the importance of maintaining strong safety measures.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights | Cybersecurity

Need for alternative funding and organizational models beyond traditional donor-grantee relationships

Speakers

– Ayman Mhanna
– Bojana Kostic
– Constanze Neher

Arguments

An ecosystemic approach is needed that bridges gaps between different sectors, including private sector SMEs and tech professionals not typically included in discussions

The Journalism Cloud Alliance represents an alternative cooperative platform approach that prioritizes shared ownership and public interest governance over big tech dependencies

Only 0.19% of global development aid ($400 million out of $212 billion) goes to media development and information integrity, compared to much larger budgets of malicious actors

Explanation

The consensus between civil society representatives and a government development official on the inadequacy of traditional funding models and the need for innovative approaches was unexpected. This suggests a recognition across sectors that current approaches are insufficient for the scale of the challenge.

Topics

Development | Economic | Sociocultural

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion revealed strong consensus on the fundamental nature of information integrity challenges as threats to democracy and human rights, the essential need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, the importance of local context and community-centered approaches, and the significant responsibilities of platforms. There was also unexpected alignment on the inadequacy of current funding models and the need for innovative approaches.

Consensus level

High level of consensus across diverse stakeholders, which is significant given the different institutional perspectives represented (government, UN, civil society, platforms, development agencies). This consensus suggests a mature understanding of the challenges and potential for coordinated action, though implementation challenges around funding and coordination remain significant barriers to effective collective response.

Different viewpoints

Platform accountability and liability approaches

Speakers

– Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza
– Gisella Lomax

Arguments

Platforms must be held accountable and transparent while respecting human rights, with some cases requiring liability for third-party harmful content

There are concerns about weakening guardrails and reduction in trust and safety capacities at major platforms

Summary

Dr. Raphel advocates for stronger legal liability measures including holding platforms liable for third-party content, while Gisella expresses concerns about platforms reducing their safety measures and emphasizes the need for platforms to maintain responsibility especially in non-commercial contexts

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights | Cybersecurity

Funding approach and resource allocation strategies

Speakers

– Ayman Mhanna
– Constanze Neher

Arguments

Only 0.19% of global development aid ($400 million out of $212 billion) goes to media development and information integrity, compared to much larger budgets of malicious actors

Smart regulation with safeguards is needed to protect democratic values while avoiding censorship

Summary

Ayman emphasizes the critical underfunding of information integrity work and calls for alternative funding models beyond traditional donor-grantee relationships, while Constanze focuses on regulatory approaches and traditional development cooperation models

Topics

Development | Economic | Legal and regulatory

Unexpected differences

Role of technical standards in information integrity

Speakers

– Audience (Silvia Cadena)
– Other panelists

Arguments

Technical standards and metadata specifications from organizations like W3C are crucial for content creators to ensure information integrity

Various arguments focusing on policy, regulation, and coalition-building approaches

Explanation

The audience member from W3C highlighted the importance of technical standards and metadata for information integrity, but this technical infrastructure approach was not addressed or integrated by any of the panelists in their responses, suggesting a gap between technical and policy communities

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory | Cybersecurity

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion showed relatively low levels of direct disagreement among speakers, with most conflicts being subtle differences in emphasis and approach rather than fundamental opposition. The main areas of disagreement centered on regulatory approaches to platform accountability and funding/resource allocation strategies.

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level. The speakers largely agreed on the fundamental challenges and the need for multi-stakeholder approaches, but differed on specific implementation strategies, regulatory mechanisms, and resource allocation priorities. This suggests a mature field where stakeholders share common goals but are still working out optimal approaches. The lack of major disagreements may indicate either genuine consensus or the diplomatic nature of the forum setting.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

All three speakers highlighted the severe funding challenges facing organizations working on information integrity, with cuts in development aid and humanitarian funding occurring precisely when these issues require more attention and resources.

Speakers

– Ayman Mhanna
– Gisella Lomax
– Constanze Neher

Arguments

Civil society organizations face funding cuts while being asked to play crucial roles in fighting information manipulation

Humanitarian sector faces massive funding challenges that limit ability to address information integrity issues

Only 0.19% of global development aid ($400 million out of $212 billion) goes to media development and information integrity, compared to much larger budgets of malicious actors

Topics

Development | Human rights

Both speakers emphasized the need for regulatory approaches that balance accountability and protection from harm with preservation of fundamental rights like freedom of expression, avoiding censorship while ensuring democratic values are protected.

Speakers

– Dr. Raphel Ramos Monteiro de Souza
– Constanze Neher

Arguments

Brazil is developing enforcement strategies that balance freedom of expression with protection from harmful content, following international human rights standards

Smart regulation with safeguards is needed to protect democratic values while avoiding censorship

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights

Both speakers advocated for innovative approaches that move beyond traditional models, emphasizing the need to engage new actors and create alternative infrastructure that reduces dependence on big tech companies while fostering broader collaboration.

Speakers

– Ayman Mhanna
– Bojana Kostic

Arguments

An ecosystemic approach is needed that bridges gaps between different sectors, including private sector SMEs and tech professionals not typically included in discussions

The Journalism Cloud Alliance represents an alternative cooperative platform approach that prioritizes shared ownership and public interest governance over big tech dependencies

Topics

Economic | Infrastructure | Sociocultural

Key takeaways

Multi-stakeholder coalitions are essential for addressing information integrity challenges, as no single actor can tackle these threats alone

Local ownership and context-specific solutions are crucial – what works in one country may fail in another, and solutions must be rooted in local realities

Bottom-up, community-centered approaches are more effective than top-down donor-driven models, with refugee-led organizations and grassroots initiatives already taking action

Platforms have evolved from passive observers to active partners, but concerns remain about weakening guardrails and reduced attention to non-commercial markets

Funding for information integrity work is severely inadequate – only 0.19% of global development aid goes to media development compared to much larger budgets of malicious actors

An ecosystemic approach is needed that bridges gaps between sectors and includes actors not traditionally involved in these discussions, such as private sector SMEs and tech professionals

Technical standards and infrastructure are important foundational elements that content creators should utilize to support information integrity

Speed of response is critical – examples like Norwegian fact-checkers getting content into classrooms within three days show the potential for rapid response systems

Resolutions and action items

Germany will continue supporting national coalitions on information integrity with expanded scope beyond just elections

UNDP will build on insights to support a new set of national coalitions with German government support

Brazil is leading a global initiative on information integrity and climate change alongside UNESCO and UN, with focus on upcoming COP 30

DW Academy will host annual meeting in Bonn in December to bring together media development and disaster communication communities

GFMD and partners are working on the Journalism Cloud Alliance as an alternative cooperative platform approach

Call for participants to think more deeply about building bridges with actors not typically included in these conferences

Unresolved issues

How to address the massive funding gap – current resources are insufficient compared to the scale of the challenge and budgets of malicious actors

How to ensure adequate coverage and resources for fact-checking in all geographical regions and for vulnerable groups like refugees

How to bridge gaps between different expert communities and move beyond cooperation within familiar circles

How to implement true multi-stakeholder models in electoral contexts rather than just bilateral arrangements

How to balance platform accountability with freedom of expression across different legal and cultural contexts

How to develop and deploy local predictive algorithms to detect disinformation campaigns before they reach scale

How to create sustainable organic funding from society itself rather than relying solely on donor-grantee relationships

Suggested compromises

Combining enforcement strategies with preventive, collaborative, and long-term measures rather than relying solely on regulatory approaches

Balancing platform liability for harmful content while preserving freedom of expression, opinion, press, and humor as protected discourse

Smart regulation with safeguards that aims for accountability rather than censorship

Mixed approaches combining cooperation, education, and accountability measures to achieve effective information environments

Working across traditional silos and ideological divides to include private sector and entrepreneurial actors in coalition building

The most pressing risk is the fact that civil society is asked to play a very important role in building coalitions, in cooperating with different actors, and in fighting effectively information manipulation, while civil society is now more than ever itself under attack, not only attacked by smear campaigns and disinformation campaigns that are building on the anti-elite sentiment, on the conspiracy theories related to the hidden agendas and everything we very often hear, but also under attack by the funding cuts it’s experiencing all over the world.

Speaker

Ayman Mhanna

Reason

This comment reframes the entire discussion by highlighting a fundamental paradox – civil society is expected to be a key solution while simultaneously being undermined. It introduces the meta-challenge that the very actors needed to solve information integrity issues are themselves victims of the problem.

Impact

This comment shifted the discussion from focusing purely on technical solutions and coalition-building strategies to examining the structural vulnerabilities of the ecosystem itself. It prompted other speakers to acknowledge funding challenges and influenced the later discussion about resource allocation and sustainability.

2024 oversee development aids to roughly 212 billion dollars. It’s a 7% decline from 2023. Do you know out of these 212 billion, how much has gone to media information environment, media development, independent media, journalism training, press freedom, digital literacy, journalist safety, etc? It’s around 0.5% of the 212 billion… 400 million dollars, let’s compare it to the annual budget of Russia today. 600 million dollars.

Speaker

Ayman Mhanna

Reason

This stark numerical comparison transforms abstract discussions about resource challenges into concrete reality. By comparing global donor spending on information integrity (400M) to single state propaganda budgets (600M-1B), it exposes the massive scale mismatch in the ‘information war.’

Impact

This data-driven intervention fundamentally changed the tone of the discussion from optimistic coalition-building to confronting harsh realities. It prompted immediate acknowledgment from other speakers like Constanze who said ‘I really take with me Ayman’s call for action’ and influenced the final recommendations toward seeking ‘organic funding from societies.’

This information is not an unavoidable disturbance. In our digital systems, it is a targeted strategy. In authoritarian contexts, it is used to support, dissent, and silence journalists, human rights defenders, and civic voices. In democracy, it erodes electoral trust, fuels division, and weakens civic space… In Africa, more than 60% of major disinformation campaigns are reportedly financed by foreign state actors.

Speaker

Constanze Neher

Reason

This comment reframes disinformation from a technical problem to a geopolitical weapon, introducing the strategic and intentional nature of information manipulation. The specific statistic about foreign state actor involvement adds concrete evidence to abstract concerns.

Impact

This shifted the discussion from treating misinformation as an unfortunate byproduct of digital technology to understanding it as deliberate warfare. It elevated the conversation to include geopolitical dimensions and influenced subsequent speakers to consider international coordination and cross-border partnerships.

People who use social media in less common languages, in non-commercial markets for these companies, war zones where they are not selling advertising, are disproportionately at risk… We really do encourage the platforms to continue to come to the table and engage and share information and especially around early warning systems or consulting communities on policy development.

Speaker

Gisella Lomax

Reason

This comment exposes a critical equity gap in platform responses – that commercial incentives determine protection levels. It highlights how the most vulnerable populations (refugees, speakers of minority languages) receive the least protection from information manipulation.

Impact

This intervention added a crucial justice and equity dimension to the technical discussion. It prompted the TikTok representative to specifically address how they evaluate geographical coverage and local partnerships, and influenced the conversation toward more inclusive approaches to coalition building.

We are good at cooperating with the people we know well, with our own expert communities… It’s much harder than to bridge the gap to the neighbor communities… Same thing for the Europe Democracy Initiative. We have three working groups… but they should be talking to each other, because democracy is not about individual silos.

Speaker

Jan Lublinsky (audience member)

Reason

This observation identifies a fundamental flaw in current coalition-building efforts – that even well-intentioned multi-stakeholder initiatives often remain siloed within their own expert communities, limiting their effectiveness.

Impact

This comment validated and deepened Ayman’s earlier call for reaching beyond traditional partners. It provided concrete examples of how even formal multi-stakeholder processes can fail to achieve true integration, reinforcing the need for more innovative approaches to coalition building.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally transformed what could have been a routine discussion about best practices into a critical examination of systemic failures and power imbalances. Ayman Mhanna’s interventions were particularly catalytic, using hard data to expose the resource mismatch and structural vulnerabilities that undermine coalition efforts. The discussion evolved from initial optimism about collaborative solutions to a more sobering recognition of the scale and intentionality of the challenges. The comments created a progression from identifying technical solutions, to understanding geopolitical dimensions, to confronting resource realities, and finally to reimagining coalition approaches. This created a more honest and urgent dialogue that moved beyond surface-level cooperation toward addressing fundamental structural issues in the information integrity ecosystem.

How can the Brazilian judicial system’s approach to balancing freedom of expression with safety and protection of minorities be applied in other contexts?

Speaker

Moderator

Explanation

The moderator noted that many have been looking to Brazil’s processes and how they balance various human rights, suggesting this is an area where other countries could learn from Brazil’s experience

What are the most effective mechanisms for fostering collaboration across sectors in information integrity work?

Speaker

Moderator

Explanation

This was posed as a direct question to understand practical approaches that have proven successful in multi-stakeholder cooperation

How can civil society organizations work effectively with private sector SMEs and tech entrepreneurs who are often excluded from discussions?

Speaker

Ayman Mhanna

Explanation

Mhanna emphasized the need to bridge gaps and overcome prejudices between traditionally left-leaning civil society and private sector actors for more effective collaboration

How can donors clarify their objectives and priorities in funding programs to combat misinformation more effectively?

Speaker

Ayman Mhanna

Explanation

Mhanna highlighted the lack of clarity among donors about what’s needed from different players, which affects funding effectiveness and impact

How can local predictive algorithms be developed to detect disinformation campaigns in their early stages?

Speaker

Ayman Mhanna

Explanation

Mhanna suggested leveraging academic and research circles working with AI to develop local solutions rather than just adapting systems from major companies

How can organic funding from society be brought to support independent media doing good work?

Speaker

Ayman Mhanna

Explanation

This relates to engaging people from hospitality, craft, industry, and trade sectors who aren’t typically part of media development conversations but have stakes in democratic systems

How can platforms better serve users in less common languages and non-commercial markets?

Speaker

Gisella Lomax

Explanation

Lomax noted that people using social media in less common languages or in areas where platforms don’t sell advertising are disproportionately at risk

How can early warning systems and community consultation on policy development be improved between platforms and humanitarian organizations?

Speaker

Gisella Lomax

Explanation

Lomax emphasized the need for platforms to continue engaging and sharing information, especially around early warning systems

How can the gap between media development and humanitarian communication communities be bridged?

Speaker

Jan Lublinsky (Audience member from DW Academy)

Explanation

Lublinsky noted the difficulty in bringing these communities together despite their overlapping concerns, particularly in crisis situations

How can geological coverage gaps in fact-checking resources be addressed, particularly for countries like Russia and China?

Speaker

Yu Jie (Audience member)

Explanation

Yu Jie noted that no IFCN-authorized fact-checking organizations are based in Russia or China, despite significant information flows from these countries

What are the best practices for implementing multi-stakeholder models in electoral contexts beyond bilateral partnerships?

Speaker

Raul Manuel (Audience member, Philippines MP)

Explanation

Manuel noted that the Philippines typically has bilateral relationships (election commission with media, or with tech companies) rather than true multi-stakeholder approaches

How can coalition building move beyond expert communities to bridge gaps with neighboring communities like legal experts and foreign ministries?

Speaker

Jan Lublinsky (Audience member from DW Academy)

Explanation

Lublinsky observed that current coalition building is good within known expert communities but struggles to bridge to related but different professional communities

How can W3C technical standards and specifications be better integrated into content creation for information integrity?

Speaker

Silvia Cadena (Audience member from W3C)

Explanation

Cadena highlighted that technical standards for provenance, metadata, and content categorization can assist in information integrity but need broader adoption by content creators and publishers