Commercial Innovation Opportunities for Civic Tech to Reduce Misinformation: "Thinking outside the bunk"
A report of expert-interview research into opportunities for new Civic Tech to reduce misinformation. The central argument is that misinformation is not only a technical problem but also a democratic and social one. It proposes four reasons to “think outside the bunk”: meaning beyond pre-/debunking.
Forum against Fakes
Together for a strong democracy
Responses to misinformation need democratic ownership. If disinformation affects trust, cohesion and public debate, then publics should not be treated as passive audiences. They need routes into shaping the response.
Forum against Fakes is a Germany-wide participation project designed to open a public debate on how society should respond to disinformation. Run by the Bertelsmann Stiftung in cooperation with Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community and other partners, it combines broad online participation with a citizens’ assembly of around 120 randomly selected citizens. The process invited people across Germany to submit proposals, share experiences, comment on others’ ideas and vote on recommendations for dealing with disinformation.
The format is inspirational because it does not treat citizens only as targets for media literacy or recipients of expert correction. It asks them to help define the problem and shape possible responses.
Online consultations gathered ideas from a large public, while the citizens’ assembly worked through these inputs, engaged with expert knowledge and produced recommendations for policy-makers. The final recommendations were presented to the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community and intended to inform Germany’s strategy for countering disinformation.
The challenge is durability. Forum against Fakes creates a powerful national conversation, but the next question is how this energy becomes sustained local capacity. How can communities not only think about misinformation locally, but design and maintain local responses over time? That is the opening for next-generation civic tech: tools that help communities turn deliberation into durable infrastructures — local networks, trusted intermediaries, shared protocols, community evidence practices and repeatable ways of responding when contested information appears
Contact
Email: tom.wilkinson@gov.scot