Brave New Futures: Human Relationships

Brave New Futures: Arts of Social Change

Listen to the third panel of our spring 2026 Buffett Symposium, Brave New Futures. The discussion focused on the arts of social change and featured: * Bing Liu [https://www.instagram.com/bingliu89/?hl=en], filmmaker and director of the Emmy- and Oscar-nominated feature documentary Minding the Gap [https://www.mindingthegapfilm.com/] and the newly released feature film Preparation for the Next Life [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparation_for_the_Next_Life_(film)] * Omar Offendum [https://www.instagram.com/offendum/], spoken word poet, rapper, and storyteller * Moderator: Ellen Harvey [https://www.ellenharvey.info/about/], conceptual artist whose recent work includes Utopia Machine [https://www.ellenharvey.info/utopia_machine/] Brave New Futures convened a visionary set of international thinkers to explore how human relationships, information ecosystems, labor, and the planet itself are being reshaped in this moment of uncertainty and possibility. From the power of art for action to the future of work and planetary survival, the symposium envisioned bold new visions for building more just and sustainable global futures. Learn more: https://buffett.northwestern.edu/events/brave-new-futures/spring-symposium.html

Brave New Futures: New Media

Listen to the second panel of our spring 2026 Buffett Symposium, Brave New Futures. The discussion focused on new media and featured: * Allison Yang [https://www.linkedin.com/in/yangjinggame/], founder and CEO of Reality Reload [https://www.realityreload.com/] * Shuwei Fang [https://shorensteincenter.org/person/shuwei-fang/], Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politic, & Public Policy [https://shorensteincenter.org/] * Moderator: Jeremy Gilbert [https://www.medill.northwestern.edu/directory/faculty/jeremy-gilbert.html], Knight Professor in Digital Media Strategy at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism  Brave New Futures convened a visionary set of international thinkers to explore how human relationships, information ecosystems, labor, and the planet itself are being reshaped in this moment of uncertainty and possibility. From the power of art for action to the future of work and planetary survival, the symposium envisioned bold new visions for building more just and sustainable global futures. Learn more: https://buffett.northwestern.edu/events/brave-new-futures/spring-symposium.html

Brave New Futures: Human Relationships

Listen to the first panel of our spring 2026 Buffett Symposium, Brave New Futures. The discussion focused on human relationships and featured: * ⁠Qing Wang⁠ [https://www.thisisqing.com/about], co-founder of ⁠The Weirdo Podcast⁠ [https://www.buheshiyi.com/] * ⁠Nataliya Kos’myna⁠ [https://www.media.mit.edu/people/nkosmyna/overview/], research scientist at MIT Media Lab’s ⁠Fluid Interfaces⁠ [https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/fluid-interfaces/overview/] group * Moderator: ⁠Nour Kteily⁠ [https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academics-research/faculty/kteily_nour/], Kellogg Chair in Enlightened Disagreement, Professor of Management & Organizations, and Founding Co-Director of the ⁠Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement ⁠ [https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academics-research/litowitz-center-enlightened-disagreement/]at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business Brave New Futures convened a visionary set of international thinkers to explore how human relationships, information ecosystems, labor, and the planet itself are being reshaped in this moment of uncertainty and possibility. From the power of art for action to the future of work and planetary survival, the symposium envisioned bold new visions for building more just and sustainable global futures. Learn more about the event: https://buffett.northwestern.edu/events/brave-new-futures/spring-symposium.html

Ensuring Accountability for Disinformation

Our winter 2026 Buffett Symposium on disinformation convened global experts and practitioners from industry, public policy, academia, and civil society to address four urgent priorities: sustaining trust and credibility in information flows; strengthening accountability for platforms, governments, and users alike; advancing innovative tools and strategies to counter disinformation; and forging multi-sector collaboration to build resilient information ecosystems worldwide. This panel convened experts in advocacy, research, and industry to discuss mechanisms for ensuring accountability of platforms, publishers, and users. Panelists included: * Imran Ahmed [https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114299/witnesses/HHRG-117-IF17-Bio-AhmedI-20211209.pdf], CEO, Center for Countering Digital Hate [https://counterhate.com/about/] * Emily Vraga [https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/ekvraga], Don & Carole Larson Professor in Health Communication, Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota * James Warren [https://www.newsguardtech.com/about/team/james-warren/], Executive Editor, NewsGuard [https://www.newsguardtech.com/] * Moderated by Priyanka Motaparthy [https://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/profiles/priyankamotaparthy/], Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Center for International Human Rights, Pritzker School of Law, Northwestern University Key Takeaways: * Platform accountability for disinformation is not absent — it has been deliberately displaced, and the legal framework that enables this must change. Ahmed argued that platforms maintain enormous power over what speech is amplified, monetized, and made visible to billions of people, while engineering systems that reward outrage and falsehood and insulating themselves from liability through Section 230. He described how CCDH research found 680,000 antisemitic posts on X viewed 193 million times in a single year — despite the platform's stated policies — with ads running alongside the content and revenues flowing back to the creators. He and Warren both pointed to the need for structural reforms: sunsetting Section 230 to restore liability, requiring risk mitigation for foreseeable harms, mandating transparency through legislation, and holding platforms financially accountable when their systems cause measurable harm to users and communities. * Reputational pressure and economic incentives, while imperfect, represent meaningful levers for accountability in the absence of regulation. Warren described how NewsGuard's reporting on misinformation sites exposed the role of programmatic advertising in funding harmful content — leading ad agencies and brands, concerned about being associated with pro-Putin or hate-driven sites, to change their practices. He also documented how straightforward transparency demands, such as requiring news outlets to disclose ownership and differentiate news from opinion, produced real changes at hundreds of sites. Vraga added that user corrections can reduce belief in misinformation, and that public pressure campaigns — from the Delete Facebook movement to advertiser boycotts following Musk's acquisition of X — have had genuine if limited financial consequences for platforms, suggesting that collective user behavior remains an underutilized accountability mechanism. * The organizations doing accountability work are themselves under attack, and defending their ability to operate is now part of the fight. Ahmed described being banned from the United States by the Trump administration — despite holding a green card and having a family here — in retaliation for CCDH's research documenting the surge in hate speech on X following Musk's takeover. Warren described a Republican amendment to the military appropriations bill that barred the Pentagon from working with NewsGuard by name. Both saw these attacks as a sign not of defeat but of progress: platforms and their political allies are fighting back precisely because accountability efforts are working. Ahmed expressed cautious optimism that the age of accountability is inevitable, pointing to Online Safety Acts in the UK and EU, growing state-level legislation in the US, and a new generation of systems-level thinking that focuses on algorithmic design and monetization rather than content moderation alone.

Countering State-Sponsored Disinformation and Ensuring Trustworthy Information Spaces

Our winter 2026 Buffett Symposium on disinformation convened global experts and practitioners from industry, public policy, academia, and civil society to address four urgent priorities: sustaining trust and credibility in information flows; strengthening accountability for platforms, governments, and users alike; advancing innovative tools and strategies to counter disinformation; and forging multi-sector collaboration to build resilient information ecosystems worldwide. This panel brought together leaders of populations targeted by state-sponsored disinformation and U.S. foreign policy to discuss approaches to countering such campaigns and to ensure trustworthy information spaces. Panelists included: * Ellen McCarthy [https://www.insaonline.org/detail-pages/person/ellen-mccarthy], Chairwoman and CEO, Trust in Media Cooperative [https://www.timcoop.org/]; former US Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence & Research * Shih-Hung Lo [https://telecom.ccu.edu.tw/p/405-1088-23008,c2258.php?Lang=en], Professor, National Chung Cheng University; Chairperson, Taiwan FactCheck Center [https://en.tfc-taiwan.org.tw/] * Viktoriia Romaniuk [https://msj.ukma.edu.ua/en/about-school/lecturers/viktoria-romaniuk/], Deputy Chief Editor, StopFake [https://www.stopfake.org/en/main/]; Director, Mohyla School of Journalism at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy * Moderated by Olga Kamenchuk [https://communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/olga-kamenchuk.html], Associate Professor of Instruction and Faculty Affiliate, Center for Communication & Public Policy, School of Communication Key Takeaways: Here's the trimmed version: Key Takeaways: * The most dangerous consequence of state-sponsored disinformation is not that people believe false things — it is that they stop trusting anything at all. Romaniuk described how Russia's decade-long information campaign against Ukraine has pursued a deliberate strategy of blurring the line between true and false, creating a climate in which people simply disengage from verification altogether. Lo echoed this from Taiwan's perspective, noting that Chinese influence campaigns during the 2024 presidential election were not designed to support any particular candidate but to convince citizens that democracy itself was broken and institutions could not be trusted. McCarthy reframed the threat in systemic terms: the strategic goal of adversaries is not persuasion but paralysis — polluting the information environment so that societies, governments, and alliances cannot think, coordinate, or act coherently. * Russia and China pursue disinformation with meaningfully different strategies, and effective responses must account for those differences. McCarthy characterized Russia's approach as focused on mass disruption and chaos, while China's is more targeted, long-term, and data-driven — what Lo described as cognitive warfare. Lo explained how Chinese-linked actors have built networks of lifestyle social media accounts that post about food and travel to gain trust before pivoting to political content at critical moments. Against chaos-based disinformation, the right response is clarity and rapid correction; against precision-based cognitive warfare, the response must be long-term resilience built through media literacy, trusted local voices, and early detection of coordinated inauthentic behavior. * Building resilient information ecosystems requires investing in trust infrastructure long before a crisis hits — and Ukraine and Taiwan offer hard-won models. Romaniuk described how StopFake spent years building a database of Russian disinformation narratives and cultivating a trusted public audience, so that when the full-scale invasion began, ordinary Ukrainians knew where to turn. Lo described Taiwan's civic technology community, where volunteer networks and professional fact-checkers use AI-assisted monitoring with final human verification, and where independent fact-checking has become authoritative enough that political parties now cite it to challenge each other. McCarthy argued that the broader lesson is the need to treat the information ecosystem as critical infrastructure — developing shared standards, provenance systems, and governance frameworks that function even when governments and platforms retreat from their traditional roles.