Organiser of first Cambridge Disinformation Summit says ‘shared learning’ can reduce ‘societal damage of chaos actors’

The inaugural Cambridge Disinformation Summit is the first event to offer a global interdisciplinary perspective on the disinformation landscape, with speakers from fields including finance, journalism, psychology, technology and healthcare.

The July 27/28 programme has been convened by Alan Jagolinzer, professor of financial accounting at Cambridge Judge Business School.

The focus is on “the broad societal damage from disinformation that includes exacerbating excess pandemic deaths, undermining democratic institutions, and fuelling aggressive war or genocidal campaigns”.

Prof Jagolinzer’s approach starts with adopting a more robust accounting practice - you might call it an “accountability” practice. As an information science, accountancy “has developed considerable infrastructure over many decades to minimise disinformation”. A horror of misinformation requires that a spade is called a spade - accounts and the law call misinformation or disinformation about a company’s financial health fraud. Robust systems to ensure veracity include reporting standards, independent audits, audit committees, regulators who can enact civil or criminal penalties, and “shareholder legal rights to hold managers accountable for intentionally misleading and harmful information, which is, by definition, disinformation”.

Prof Jagolinzer became involved after one of his relatives died after accepting vaccine disinformation as fact.

“Collectively,” he says, “my questions led me to find scholars outside of my field, from journalism, authoritarian studies, social psychology, psychiatry, public policy, computer science, law and other information sciences, to help me better understand the nature of these information environments and the assorted approaches each discipline is examining to help mitigate the societal damage of malignant information chaos actors.

“What I found were pockets of highly knowledgeable and dedicated academics, policymakers and practice professionals who shared my concerns about the global existential risks of disinformation, but who were approaching the problem from different angles or frameworks.

“I felt compelled to convene the groups, because I sensed the potential to amplify all our collective impact if we shared learning across disciplines.”

His goal is for the two-day event to identify disinformation, and discuss strategies to minimise its influence. This means unpicking entrenched belief structures “to explore how one might penetrate information echo chambers or create opportunities for people in different belief systems to relearn how to safely talk with each other and perhaps find common ground”.

There’s an additional urgency to this event because 2024 is election year in the US - a time when the bots and troll farms flood online discussion portals with the populist views of their masters.

“One of the reasons why there is greater urgency is because I’m sensing that in these [far right] political movements generally there’s a mood to shut down these discussions, because I think they feel threatened,” remarks Alan. “Last week, for instance, Stanford University issued a statement saying it is ‘deeply concerned about ongoing efforts to chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much-needed academic research in the areas of misinformation and disinformation – both at Stanford and across academia’.”

But disinformation, he adds, “isn’t just located in country x, it’s happening everywhere today, in country x or corporate fraud y”.

With 200 people signed on to attend the first Cambridge Disinformation Summit, and hundreds more expected online, there’s no doubting there’s a demand for insights and strategies to counteract disinformation.

The summit, says Prof Jagolinzer, is “probably the most important project I’ve worked on in my entire career”.

Programme details here. Speaker Dr Emma Briant on lies in politics here. Delegate Eirliani Abdul Rahman report on what happened to Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council here.

A pre-Summit debate at Cambridge Union on Wednesday, July 26, will consider the statement: ‘In the UK, unrestricted free speech is less concerned with defending truths and more interested in promoting a narrow selection of political views.’ Details here.