Carnegie Endowment and Princeton University Launch New Disinformation Research Center

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.