Tackling Disinformation

Throughout history the powerful have been able to control and distort the news for their own gain, but, in the modern digital age, has disinformation become a much more serious problem? Our Win-win workshop on May 6th 2025 explored how to tackle such disinformation.

From our research we discovered three main approaches – see the bullet points below. We opened the workshop by declaring that this topic might be one where common ground already exists. That is, most people (apart from billionaires perhaps – see later) would probably support tackling disinformation, so the focus might be more on how to balance the three approaches:

  • Structural: Platform regulation and strengthening journalism
  • Educational: Media literacy and critical thinking
  • Relational/cultural: In tackling disinformation we are better together

The workshop began with an ‘active’ learning phase containing reading, quizzes and a short discussion. We split the reading into two smaller chunks. People said they liked the chunking and the quizzes, which served to reinforce – or activate – the learning. The short initial discussion also helped them to ease into the material prior to the main discussion. This followed a break and lasted 40 minutes. It allowed all ideas to be expressed and heard. The facilitator captured 10 distinct ideas in a spreadsheet and the workshop ended with people voting for their top ones. Here are the most successful four:


Statement % Voting for this
Dedicated AI that is fed from multiple reputable sources 71%
Educate people individually, especially the young initially but then everyone, to think critically. Kids educate parents 57%
People do work together in times of crisis – make use of community collaboration 57%
Single reliable source that can be trusted, fed by multiple good sources/institutions and must be decentralised and independent 43%

Some reflections
The desire for reputable sources was high. The top statements covered systemic, individual/education and cultural solutions. Perhaps the biggest unanswered question is how reputable sources are determined and who decides? But we were all relieved to have such an excellent model as Wikipedia.

We were left with a question about the material we provided, as well. Should the role of the billionaire be included, to better represent the enormity of the challenge of overcoming disinformation?

Paul Thistlethwaite, Thinking Box