Second Cambridge Disinformation Summit calls for global online legislative framework

The second Cambridge Disinformation Summit ended with a call for a cross-national legislative framework rather than the current nation-by-nation approach, says organiser Prof Alan Jagolinzer.

The event, which took place at Cambridge Judge Business School, focused on the effectiveness of actions designed to understand or lessen the harm from intentionally spreading inaccurate or misleading information.

“I sensed that there was consensus that any legislative action that assesses or regulates online tech policies must be coordinated across nations,” said Summit organiser Prof Jagolinzer, who is co-director of the Centre for Financial Reporting and Accountability (CFRA) at Cambridge Judge Business School.

“The technology companies’ ability to bypass legislation is greater if they see enforcement as a localised issue where they have to only appease regulators from one country like Australia or Brazil.”

Another issue discussed at several Summit sessions is how disinformation often feeds from legitimate grievances about lack of economic and social mobility.

The Summit hosted three sessions to discuss how researchers and policymakers face online, legal, professional, and sometimes physical threat and harassment when they try to understand or mitigate information-related harms.

The inaugural Cambridge Disinformation Summit was held in 2023 to build awareness of the issue, while this year’s second Summit on 23-25 April focused on what researchers have learned that might reduce harms from disinformation.

“The papers selected for the Summit suggest that certain interventions offer some promise,” noted Prof Jagolinzer. “However, we plan to further assess how well the results might hold up to other assumptions or settings, whether the potential impact is scalable, why some interventions might not show results, and whether any interventions infringe on rights such as free speech.”

The three-day event featured a range of research workshops featuring assessments of topics including the effect of deplatforming on social media by Dr Max Falkenberg, a postdoc researcher at the City of London University, how cognitive and socio-affective inoculation affects the perception of mock political candidates by Michael Cohen, senior research analyst at the University of Chicago, and how moral deliberation reduces people’s intentions to share headlines they know are fake news, says Daniel A Effron, a professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School.

Panel sessions also considered topics including the effect of crypto influencers, how to “disarm” disinformation in the media, and a health policy and communication roundtable.