Live from the Buffett Reading Room
Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration for Countering Disinformation
Description
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 leaders representing the global tech industry, journalism, and policy to explore how multi-stakeholder collaboration can collectively address the challenges of disinformation. Panelists included: * Angie Drobnic Holan [https://www.angieholan.com/], Director of the International Fact-Checking Network [https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/], Poynter Institute * Erin Saltman [https://gifct.org/team/dr-erin-saltman-2/], Senior Director, Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) [https://gifct.org/] * David Bray [https://www.stimson.org/ppl/david-bray/], Distinguished Chair of the Accelerator, Stimson Center [https://www.stimson.org/]; Principal/CEO, LDA Ventures, Inc. * Moderated by Nicholas Diakopoulos [https://communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/nicholas-diakopoulos.html], Professor and Director of the Computational Journalism Lab [https://www.cj-lab.org/], School of Communication, Northwestern University Key Takeaways: * Effective multi-stakeholder collaboration on disinformation is less a coordination problem than a problem of misaligned incentives — and that distinction matters enormously for how we respond. Holan argued that the current moment is not simply one of stakeholders failing to get on the same page, but of certain powerful actors — major platforms and political figures — actively benefiting from the persistence of disinformation. She pushed back against the narrative that fact-checking has failed, noting that Meta's third-party fact-checking program was still running in every country except the United States when it was curtailed, and that it was dismantled not because it didn't work but because it threatened profitable business models and political interests. The practical implication, she argued, is that coalitions for information integrity must be built around the sectors of society — science, education, journalism, civic institutions — whose core missions genuinely depend on accurate information. * Addressing disinformation requires understanding why people reach for false narratives in the first place, not just correcting the narratives themselves. Bray drew on his experience across national security and technology policy to argue that people turn to conspiracy theories when they feel anxious or purposeless, and that debunking false claims can feel like an attack on identity. He pointed to lessons from public health, where effective campaigns succeeded not by presenting facts alone but by working through trusted community messengers and giving people a genuine sense of agency. Saltman echoed this from a counterterrorism perspective, noting that violent extremist recruitment succeeds largely by offering belonging and purpose — and that counter-messaging works best when it starts from common ground rather than confrontation. * Tackling disinformation at scale demands cross-sector partnerships built around concrete, time-limited goals — and the GIFCT offers a replicable model. Saltman described how the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism was founded because no single platform or government could address cross-platform harms alone, and how its working groups bring together tech companies, civil society, law enforcement, and governments around specific shared problems with defined outputs and timelines. She noted that civil society organizations are typically the most resource-constrained partners in these collaborations and require deliberate structural support. All three panelists agreed that ground-truth knowledge about how harmful content actually circulates — including coded language, memes, and platform-specific behavior — almost always originates with civil society, making their inclusion essential.
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