Information integrity is not just a democratic integrity issue, it is a national security issue. Adversaries have attempted to compromise democratic processes and stoke social division, including here in the UK. Manipulative actors know that democracies are weaker when divided, polarised, and deceived. Hostile information operations are the missiles of cyberspace, and democratic integrity their target.
Under this increasingly coordinated assault, resources for resilience have never been more strained. Meta and X have curtailed their information integrity teams. Data access for researchers has been restricted or abolished entirely. Numerous sources of public funding for information integrity have been reduced.
Thanks to artificial intelligence, information manipulation campaigns that were once resource-intensive are now cheap, easy, and ever more innovative. This has given information manipulators space to focus on deepening collaboration with one another.
The situation is already bleak. 2024 constituted the nineteenth consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Trust in democratic processes is in long-term decline. Evidence suggests that the corrosive effect of ever more coordinated campaigns of information manipulation, the type of which has been alleged around the 2024 Romanian presidential election, may be a contributing factor to the trust deficit.
However, our adversaries do not have unlimited resources. We have had success in devising ways to make their efforts more expensive, difficult, and error-prone, but doing so is challenging and no organisation can do it alone. So how can the information integrity field sustainably respond to the increasing coordination of information manipulators?
One answer is more effective coalition-building: investing in long-term, trusted partnerships of purpose. This means going beyond one-off collaborations and investing in the selfless sharing of resources, the formation of common strategies, and a fresh drive towards cooperation at national and global levels.
How coalitions have upheld information integrity
Here are five examples of coalitions that have successfully upheld information integrity:
Ukraine
In Ukraine, a coalition of civil society organisations working to fight information manipulation are collaborating to limit duplication and amplify the reach of their work. This grouping of marketers, web traffic analysts, audience segmentation specialists, and narrative researchers are delivering economies of scale which help them counter Russian manipulation more effectively than any of their organisations could alone.
Kosovo
In Kosovo, independent media outlet The Geopost built a coalition of purpose to plug an unforeseen funding gap. Just before the organisation held the second Balkan Disinformation Summit, it faced a funding challenge. Rather than cancel the event, the organisers appealed to the local community, underlining the shared interest in information integrity. They secured sponsorship from hotels, local business leaders, a restaurant, the diplomatic community, and even a taxi company in what must be one of the most ‘whole of society’ coalitions the information integrity field has ever assembled. Thanks to this collective effort, the event went ahead as planned.
Philippines
In the lead-up to the 2022 Philippines election, a coalition helped increase message discipline and public confidence in fact-checking. A common challenge for legitimate fact-checkers is the need to avoid confusion with politically biased ‘fake fact-checkers’ . The resulting damage in credibility can help those seeking to delegitimate and defund fact-checking. Civil society duly formed #FactsFirstPH, a coalition which brought together reputable organisations such as Rappler. By adopting a consistent branding for fact-checks across more than 100 legitimate organisations including members of the gold-standard International Fact-Checking Network, #FactsFirstPH was able to consistently signal credibility.
UN Action Coalition on Information Integrity in Elections
In response to calls for meaningful international collaboration on information integrity, the UN Action Coalition on Information Integrity in Elections was created. The grouping recognises that whilst it is placed to see the bigger picture, trust is often rooted locally. Consequently, much of its focus is on galvanising coalitions at the national level. For example, the Action Coalition works on forming such a coalition in Zambia prior to the nation’s 2026 elections.
Taiwan
In Taiwan, organisations recognised that sharing data through trusted coalitions could convert local insight into transnational resilience. Noting that foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) campaigns often use similar tactics in different geographies, insight-sharing partnerships were forged with like-minded organisations including India’s O.P. Jindal Global University and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. A common means of threat and response categorisation called DISARM was used, alongside STIX (Structured Threat Information Expression), an interoperable open-source language structure. This means of collaboration enabled insight to be acted on in real-time.
Increasing operational efficiency through coalition-building does not fully substitute for a well-financed information integrity field which benefits from adequate data access and resourcing. However, faced with the challenges of the moment, forging ever-deeper coalitions of purpose to stand stronger together has become more urgent than ever.
From the national to the transnational
Artificial intelligence has made it easier for information operations to be launched across national frontiers in multiple languages and iterations. Many of the most pressing challenges, such as the need to oblige platforms to share data on information operations with researchers, and the need to share evidence and insight, are shared across geographies. Sharing resources and common strategies through permanent transnational coalitions will be essential to convert findings into global impact sustained across the whole election cycle.
This means harnessing insights such as the EEAS’ Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference threat assessments, a vital source of insight on transnational FIMI threats, investing in collaborations between fact-checkers such as the European Fact-Checking Standards Network, and strengthening means of sharing insight into malign operations through trusted collaborations such as through the Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC) and the G7’s Rapid Response Mechanism.
To this end, WFD will continue to advocate for cooperation and long-term engagement of all stakeholders throughout the electoral cycle to create trusting and stable coalition approaches.
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To strengthen information integrity in elections, strengthen coalitions
To strengthen information integrity in elections, strengthen coalitions
Information integrity is not just a democratic integrity issue, it is a national security issue. Adversaries have attempted to compromise democratic processes and stoke social division, including here in the UK. Manipulative actors know that democracies are weaker when divided, polarised, and deceived. Hostile information operations are the missiles of cyberspace, and democratic integrity their target.
Under this increasingly coordinated assault, resources for resilience have never been more strained. Meta and X have curtailed their information integrity teams. Data access for researchers has been restricted or abolished entirely. Numerous sources of public funding for information integrity have been reduced.
Thanks to artificial intelligence, information manipulation campaigns that were once resource-intensive are now cheap, easy, and ever more innovative. This has given information manipulators space to focus on deepening collaboration with one another.
The situation is already bleak. 2024 constituted the nineteenth consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Trust in democratic processes is in long-term decline. Evidence suggests that the corrosive effect of ever more coordinated campaigns of information manipulation, the type of which has been alleged around the 2024 Romanian presidential election, may be a contributing factor to the trust deficit.
However, our adversaries do not have unlimited resources. We have had success in devising ways to make their efforts more expensive, difficult, and error-prone, but doing so is challenging and no organisation can do it alone. So how can the information integrity field sustainably respond to the increasing coordination of information manipulators?
One answer is more effective coalition-building: investing in long-term, trusted partnerships of purpose. This means going beyond one-off collaborations and investing in the selfless sharing of resources, the formation of common strategies, and a fresh drive towards cooperation at national and global levels.
How coalitions have upheld information integrity
Here are five examples of coalitions that have successfully upheld information integrity:
Ukraine
In Ukraine, a coalition of civil society organisations working to fight information manipulation are collaborating to limit duplication and amplify the reach of their work. This grouping of marketers, web traffic analysts, audience segmentation specialists, and narrative researchers are delivering economies of scale which help them counter Russian manipulation more effectively than any of their organisations could alone.
Kosovo
In Kosovo, independent media outlet The Geopost built a coalition of purpose to plug an unforeseen funding gap. Just before the organisation held the second Balkan Disinformation Summit, it faced a funding challenge. Rather than cancel the event, the organisers appealed to the local community, underlining the shared interest in information integrity. They secured sponsorship from hotels, local business leaders, a restaurant, the diplomatic community, and even a taxi company in what must be one of the most ‘whole of society’ coalitions the information integrity field has ever assembled. Thanks to this collective effort, the event went ahead as planned.
Philippines
In the lead-up to the 2022 Philippines election, a coalition helped increase message discipline and public confidence in fact-checking. A common challenge for legitimate fact-checkers is the need to avoid confusion with politically biased ‘fake fact-checkers’ . The resulting damage in credibility can help those seeking to delegitimate and defund fact-checking. Civil society duly formed #FactsFirstPH, a coalition which brought together reputable organisations such as Rappler. By adopting a consistent branding for fact-checks across more than 100 legitimate organisations including members of the gold-standard International Fact-Checking Network, #FactsFirstPH was able to consistently signal credibility.
UN Action Coalition on Information Integrity in Elections
In response to calls for meaningful international collaboration on information integrity, the UN Action Coalition on Information Integrity in Elections was created. The grouping recognises that whilst it is placed to see the bigger picture, trust is often rooted locally. Consequently, much of its focus is on galvanising coalitions at the national level. For example, the Action Coalition works on forming such a coalition in Zambia prior to the nation’s 2026 elections.
Taiwan
In Taiwan, organisations recognised that sharing data through trusted coalitions could convert local insight into transnational resilience. Noting that foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) campaigns often use similar tactics in different geographies, insight-sharing partnerships were forged with like-minded organisations including India’s O.P. Jindal Global University and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. A common means of threat and response categorisation called DISARM was used, alongside STIX (Structured Threat Information Expression), an interoperable open-source language structure. This means of collaboration enabled insight to be acted on in real-time.
Increasing operational efficiency through coalition-building does not fully substitute for a well-financed information integrity field which benefits from adequate data access and resourcing. However, faced with the challenges of the moment, forging ever-deeper coalitions of purpose to stand stronger together has become more urgent than ever.
From the national to the transnational
Artificial intelligence has made it easier for information operations to be launched across national frontiers in multiple languages and iterations. Many of the most pressing challenges, such as the need to oblige platforms to share data on information operations with researchers, and the need to share evidence and insight, are shared across geographies. Sharing resources and common strategies through permanent transnational coalitions will be essential to convert findings into global impact sustained across the whole election cycle.
This means harnessing insights such as the EEAS’ Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference threat assessments, a vital source of insight on transnational FIMI threats, investing in collaborations between fact-checkers such as the European Fact-Checking Standards Network, and strengthening means of sharing insight into malign operations through trusted collaborations such as through the Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC) and the G7’s Rapid Response Mechanism.
To this end, WFD will continue to advocate for cooperation and long-term engagement of all stakeholders throughout the electoral cycle to create trusting and stable coalition approaches.
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