Cambridge Disinformation Summit organiser says late April conference will counter falsehoods

With the world nigh-on shipwrecked by false actors, black hats, quasi-criminal nation states and an epidemic of fake news, the tagline for the Cambridge Disinformation Summit later this month is ‘Keeping the pilot light lit’ for evidence-based learning and inference.

The work to disentangle fact from fiction and truth from propaganda is now even more important, says the organiser of the three-day event, Alan Jagolinzer, professor of financial accounting at Cambridge Judge Business School.

“Disinformation research has been effectively defunded in the US,” notes Prof Jagolinzer, “and now has to be conducted part time and underground. This is one reason why our work is so important and we have adopted a tagline that we – the global summit community – are ‘Keeping the pilot light lit’ for evidence-based learning and inference.”

In a significant downturn since the last summit, he added: “Spreading disinformation seems to be an effective means of career advancement, for instance RFK Jr.”

Robert F Kennedy Junior is the US secretary of health and human services, notable even in a crowded field for his enthusiasm for disproven theories such as “autism comes from vaccines” and that school shootings were almost non-existent “prior to the introduction of Prozac”.

Prof Jagolinzer has taken note of the normalisation of ideas that would once have been dismissed as ridiculous.

“Since we last held a summit in 2023, the global information landscape has seemingly worsened, by orders of magnitude,” he says. “I do not think there is a higher volume of poor quality information than before, however, I sense there is stronger will, by some exploitative global actors, including politicians and tech CEOs, to enhance media infrastructure that profits from and amplifies information disorder.”

Disinformation has enabled a realignment of the world and the new status quo, he says, “features geopolitical shifts that undermine democratic institutional stability, increasing the risk of terroristic acts, increasing the ability to marginalise targeted communities, supporting forced human migration, and increasing the likelihood of violent global conflict”.

At the same time, however, the mechanisms of power – and its misuse – are better understood than ever.

“One positive change since we last convened in 2023 is that we now have greater transparency about the intentions of key actors who drive much of the information disorder,” Prof Jagolinzer says. “Many facades have been torn away since we last met. We know now, for example, that senior Meta executives have little interest in information integrity on, or societal harms from, their platforms – hence Meta’s decision to end fact-checking.

“Elon Musk has also revealed his intentions to ‘shadow rule’ with his deep political engagement in the US and his incendiary and unsubstantiated rhetoric that seemingly threatens democratic governments elsewhere.

The 2025 summit, on 23-25 April, has three core themes – new research on the harm disinformation causes, how legislators can regulate disinformation, and how information scientists and policymakers can improve threat awareness and resilience in today’s geopolitical environment?

The summit will open with a discussion of the global nature of information disorder, featuring Bellingcat CEO Eliot Higgins. A discussion of social norms that support harassment of others will feature University of Cambridge Vice Chancellor Deborah Prentice.

A keynote dinner on managing threats in disinformation work will feature former VP for trust and safety at Twitter, Yoel Roth, and the BBC’s disinformation and social media correspondent, Marianna Spring.

Also on the agenda for the three-day event at the Judge Business School will be how crypto supports exploitative actors, talks on disinformation as an instrument for authoritarianism, and “personal experience from within a conspiratorial community”.

Conference details are available here.