The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Princeton University announced in late June the launch of the Institute for Research on the Information Environment (IRIE), a new research organization designed to study and develop solutions to disinformation. According to the announcement:
June 22, 2022 The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Princeton University announced today a year-long effort to design the Institute for Research on the Information Environment (IRIE), an international resource to study information ecosystems that can spur evidence-based policy solutions. “The recent pandemic has only underscored the challenges policymakers face in addressing complex issues within a polluted information environment. Unfortunately, little is known about the effects of threats like disinformation or countermeasures to them,” said Alicia Wanless, director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment. “Now more than ever the international community needs the support and resources to fully understand today’s information environment and craft sound policy solutions—that’s why we’re developing IRIE.”
Read the rest here.
The statement goes on to explain how the IRIE will operate:
IRIE will aim to design an inclusive multi-stakeholder research institution modeled after the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) that supports large-scale shared infrastructure and brings researchers from around the world together to speed new discoveries. Building on lessons learned from many disciplines, IRIE will enable foundational science to meet the urgent need of safeguarding the global information environment Specifically, IRIE will:
- Maintain data and technical resources that support a wide range of analyses
- Speed academic research by building accessible data pipelines
- Advance policy debates around managing online commons
- Develop international multi-sectoral capacity for evidence-based stewardship of the information environment
- Improve policymaking by enabling a richer understanding of the information environment and its impact on society.
For additional informaiton on the IRIE, go here.
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