By Sunday Ani
Following colossal damages caused by misinformation and disinformation around the world, two global disinformation experts, Sheldon Himelfarb and Dr. Phil Howard, have established the International Panel on Information Environment (IPIE) to address the scourge. T
he agency would be launched during the Nobel Prize Summit coming up in Washington D.C, United States of America between May 24 and 26.
This is in recognition of the existential crisis misinformation has caused around the globe ranging from spreading false information on climate change, nearly provoking military confrontations, to fueling COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, thereby causing thousands of needless deaths, and directly causing mob violence in France, Sri Lanka, Mexico, and around the globe. It is a fundamental, global problem that impedes solutions to other global challenges like climate change, rising authoritarianism, and pandemics.
Modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was created in 1988 to determine the state of knowledge on climate change and provide regular scientific assessments on its implications and risks, the IPIE would convene leading thinkers and scholars in the field such as data scientists, misinformation experts, tech leaders, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists, journalists, and humanitarian activists, who would review data and scientific literature to be able to build an international consensus on the scope and impacts of misinformation and begin analyzing potential solutions. It is believed that this step could help to establish the standards needed for a healthy information environment over time.
However, Sydney Dennen of the IPIE Press will be available to connect people to the IPIE’s leaders so they could give them a deep dive briefing on the IPIE’s conception, mission and launch as well as plans to help leaders around the world address the global information environment crisis through their shared discoveries.