Commercial Innovation Opportunities for Civic Tech to Reduce Misinformation: "Thinking outside the bunk"

Executive Summary

Every day, people encounter false or misleading information online: about their health, their food, their politicians, their neighbours. The standard response has been to fact-check it: identify the falsehood, correct it before it spreads (“prebunking”), or correct it after the fact (“debunking”). This concept note argues that while fact-checking tools are important, they are not enough on their own. Instead of focusing only on identifying, preventing, and removing false information, we can think more broadly about how democratic societies support healthy public debate, given the inherent uncertainties of knowledge and the complicated boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate disagreements and the need for any misinformation solution to focus on legitimacy as well as efficacy.

For context, social media and generative AI have made misinformation easier and cheaper to create and spread, while also making it harder for citizens and institutions to distinguish authentic content from manipulated material. In response, governments and researchers have invested heavily in technical solutions such as fact-checking systems, AI detection tools, content labelling, and media literacy programmes. Are there different approaches that can still be explored?

The central argument of the note is that misinformation is not only a technical problem but also a democratic and social one. It proposes four main reasons to “think outside the bunk”: meaning beyond the dominant focus on debunking and prebunking misinformation.

1. Democratic legitimacy risks

Moderation and fact-checking systems can easily be perceived as undemocratic if people feel decisions about acceptable speech are being taken away from citizens and handed to governments, experts, or large technology companies. Even when moderation aims to reduce harm, many people may experience it as censorship or political control, especially in already polarised societies where trust in institutions is fragile. Any serious response to misinformation needs to ask not just “does this work?” but “will people accept it as fair?”

2. The myth of a past “age of fact”

Many current responses to misinformation are based on the idea that society once shared a common understanding of facts and trusted experts, but that this stability has now broken down. Public debates have always involved rumours, propaganda, selective evidence, and conflicts over truth and expertise. Many groups were also historically excluded from public discussion altogether. The task is not to restore a golden age that never existed, but to build fairer, more open ways of navigating disagreement and uncertainty.

3. Limited strategic value in funding more “bunking” tools

Fact-checking and misinformation detection already receive significant funding and attention internationally. Governments, universities, media organisations, and technology companies are heavily investing in AI-based detection systems, content moderation tools, and debunking platforms. This does not mean these tools are unimportant. Rather than adding to an already crowded field of moderation technologies, there is an opportunity to explore underdeveloped approaches that focus on the social and institutional conditions shaping how people trust, contest, and act on information.

4. Adversarial responses versus collaborative governance

Fact-checking approaches often frame misinformation as an adversarial problem: people are either informed or misinformed, and harmful content must be corrected or removed. This sits uneasily with traditions of collaborative governance that emphasise participation, co-production, dialogue, and shared responsibility. The note suggests there may be an opportunity for a more collaborative “Scottish approach” to misinformation technology. The note proposes that this tradition could be brought to bear on misinformation: not just correcting false claims from above, but helping communities, frontline workers, civil society organisations, and public bodies work together to build more trustworthy information environments.

To ground these arguments, the note draws on in-depth interviews with twelve practitioners and experts; people working in public health, food regulation, government communications, civic technology, community engagement, and misinformation research, in Scotland, while also triangulating with specialists in the EU, and the United States. Their accounts point to a common theme: misinformation is not only a content problem. It flourishes where institutional trust has broken down, where communities feel unheard, and where the flow of information is one-way rather than a genuine dialogue.

Based on these interviews, the note proposes a different way of mapping the problem. Rather than focusing on false content, it looks at the relationships between five groups: the public bodies and organisations responsible for delivering reliable information (information integrity organisations); the researchers and specialists who produce expert knowledge (expert communities); other bodies such as media organisations, charities, and regulators that need to coordinate with information integrity organisations (other information-active organisations); the trusted local figures, such as community leaders, frontline workers, health professionals, through whom people actually receive and process information; and the diverse information communities themselves. Misinformation takes hold when these relationships break down. Technology can help repair and strengthen them.

From this, the note identifies ten areas where new civic technologies could make a genuine difference:

• helping organisations understand and manage their own information cycle
• supporting communities to co-design responses to misinformation affecting them
• enabling “social listening” with tools that help institutions understand what people actually need to know, rather than just broadcasting corrections
• identifying and supporting the local trusted figures that communities already rely on
• helping organisations form coalitions around shared messaging
• presenting a range of perspectives rather than simply declaring one view correct
• help local communities create and own their own information solutions
• facilitate community-to-community information sharing instead of just de-contextualised community notes
• communicating nuance and uncertainty in ways that are engaging rather than alienating
• helping practitioners keep up with misinformation research.

These opportunities are held together by four values: democratic pluralism, digital inclusion, respect for frontline workers, and community-centred design.

The note does not argue that fact-checking should be abandoned. It argues that fact-checking alone is not enough. The deeper challenge is not whether a claim is true or false, but whether democratic societies have the relationships, institutions, and public infrastructure needed to navigate disagreement and uncertainty together. Scotland has the traditions and the ambition to lead on exactly this. Future investment in misinformation technology should ask not just whether a tool can detect falsehoods, but whether it strengthens trust, supports the people already doing this work on the ground, and helps communities become more capable of thinking well together.