The information ecosystem affects outcomes in nearly every area philanthropy cares about. From mainstream media to social media, and from flyers on lampposts to reports from consulting firms, the information ecosystem comprises the actors, platforms, and incentives that shape what people see, share, and trust. Credibility does not flow automatically from institutional status. Established media, government, academia, and other institutions can themselves be distrusted or reproduce existing inequities and prejudices. This is why concerns about the information ecosystem’s health are troubling. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026, drawing on its Global Risks Perception Survey of more than 1,300 global leaders and experts, identifies “misinformation and disinformation” as the second-most-severe global risk over the next two years. It also warns that efforts to address this challenge are “coming up against a formidable opponent in generative AI-created false or misleading content that can be produced and distributed at scale.” In some cases, false claims that undermine the information ecosystem result from coordinated strategies advanced by foreign influence operations and amplified by digital business models that solve for attention and scale.

The consequences are tangible across institutions, communities, and funder priorities. Across OECD surveyed countries, 44 percent of people report low or no trust in their national government, while in conflict-affected settings, false or manipulated information can spread faster than aid and cause real harm. UN peacekeeping practitioners have described false and manipulated information as “weapons of war” because rumors can inflame tensions, trigger retaliation, and put civilians and humanitarian workers at risk. These dynamics can derail health campaigns with false claims that a vaccine is unsafe, undermine gender equity through manosphere-driven narratives that fuel harassment and backlash against girls, women, and LGBTQ+ communities, and stall climate action by eroding confidence in clean energy. These information harms do not arise in isolation but build on distrust borne from economic insecurity, failing public services, historic abuses, and institutions’ failure to deliver. In this environment, even evidence-based information struggles to spread effectively as outrage-driven content and divisive narratives crowd out credible sources.

Some governments have taken note, particularly on social platforms. In Europe, regulatory frameworks such as the Digital Services Act and the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act are raising expectations for platform accountability and risk mitigation. In December 2025, Australia became the first country to ban social media for users under 16, prompting other countries to explore similar policies. Courts in Brazil have shown a willingness to enforce platform compliance, and in the United States, a growing wave of litigation is beginning to hold platforms accountable for harms stemming from product design.

Coalitions that include philanthropy and civil society have supported public-sector actions. Yet overall philanthropic support to buttress the information ecosystem remains fragmented. Because the information ecosystem sits upstream of many funder priorities across climate, health, democracy, racial equity, gender, humanitarian assistance, and more, strengthening it is increasingly central to philanthropic impact. We conducted a series of interviews with funders who have interests in the information ecosystem, and their responses suggest that while many philanthropies see the issue as material to their work, few treat it as a core program area. As a result, efforts to strengthen the information ecosystem can fall between portfolios—relevant to priorities but rarely landing within any one team’s strategy or budget.

Practical Pathways for Philanthropy to Act

Many funders are still early in considering the information ecosystem as a strategic area of work, and few have a fully developed approach. Our interviews with practitioners and subject matter experts identified three approaches that funders can use to strengthen the information ecosystem:

1. Reduce harm. Limit the spread and algorithmic amplification of harmful, false, misleading, manipulative, or out-of-context narratives.
2. Build infrastructure. Increase the supply and reach of credible information and trusted messengers.
3. Equip audiences. Strengthen people’s ability to evaluate and share information responsibly.

These three approaches provide an organizing framework; each includes several pathways funders can pursue, depending on their goals, capabilities, and risk appetites. These pathways reinforce one another, with some doing “double duty.” For example, improving how platforms manage amplification can reduce harm and increase the likelihood that credible information will break through.

It’s also worth noting that while generative AI is accelerating and intensifying many of the challenges facing the information ecosystem, it is not the only driver of information harms. We scoped this research to complement a rapidly growing body of work on AI-related risks and governance by examining the broader information ecosystem and the full range of levers available to philanthropy. For that reason, AI appears here as a stand-alone pathway.

1. Reduce the Impact of Harmful Content and Narratives

Efforts to shift platform behavior must contend with powerful incentives, complex policy environments, and the speed and scale of harmful content. Even so, there are signs of progress, particularly in Europe, where regulatory momentum has created new tools and shifted attention toward implementation. Philanthropy has played a role by supporting research, advocacy, coalitions, and field building that help make such action possible.

Momentum varies across countries, making early investment critical. Funders can help lay the groundwork by backing organizations already active in this space to strengthen civil society capacity and build the evidence needed when policy windows open. Our interviewees emphasized that funding still falls short of the scale of the challenge, even as harms—from online harassment to youth mental health impacts—become more visible and urgent.

Practical pathways to reduce harm

• Regulate and improve online platforms and their algorithms. This pathway includes research, advocacy, strategic litigation, and policy design to hold platforms—particularly social media platforms—accountable for their operations. Efforts focus on increasing transparency, enforcing standards, and changing the incentives that reward the amplification and monetization of harmful or manipulative content. Because this can also suppress lawful speech, funders should support safeguards such as clear rules, independent oversight, due process, and avenues for appeal.
• Monitor and expose coordinated manipulation networks. Another pathway focuses on monitoring, investigative research, and public reporting to detect coordinated campaigns, map networks, and identify who produces and finances harmful narratives. By making manipulation more visible, this work can support platform action, inform policy, and equip civil society and journalists with credible evidence to challenge harmful actors.
• Support AI accountability. Significant attention and energy are focused on AI because generative tools can exacerbate information harms by making false or misleading content easier to create, personalize, and distribute at scale. This pathway focuses on shaping norms, safeguards, and policies for AI systems, including reducing the risk that generative models are used to accelerate manipulation and increasing transparency about how AI systems are governed.

2. Build Infrastructure to Help Credible Information Travel

Many funders already support issue-specific and often time-bound communication campaigns, but interviewees noted underinvestment in a broader set of “always-on” messengers and infrastructure. Increasingly, people—especially younger audiences—do not get information primarily from credentialed experts or traditional institutions; they get it through social media, video platforms, and personalities such as creators, influencers, podcasters, and other prominent cultural voices. Some of the most harmful narratives also spread this way, traveling across issues through compelling messengers, formats, and networks, rather than through formal issue advocacy alone.

Our interviews underscored the need for greater cross-issue investment in the people, channels, and capabilities that consistently help credible information reach persuadable audiences. Each of the pathways listed below is tightly interrelated; the content people create, the channels that carry it, the platforms that shape its reach, and the shared infrastructure that helps messengers learn what works all influence whether credible narratives can travel and endure. These dynamics also vary considerably by context: the messengers, channels, and strategies that are effective in one region or information environment may not translate directly to another.

Practical pathways to build infrastructure for credible information 

• Strengthen independent journalism. Supporting independent and local reporting as a core source of credible information is another important pathway, especially where the business model for public interest journalism has weakened. Stronger journalism can surface reliable facts, increase accountability, and provide trusted information that community members can act on.
• Launch or invest in media properties. Funders can support new or existing media properties designed to reach audiences at scale, including those not consistently reached by traditional news.
• Empower trusted messengers and digital creators. These investments equip creators, organizers, faith-based leaders, and other community messengers with the resources to reach larger audiences. The goal is to sustain these producers by providing the tools, training, networks, and support systems that help them produce high-quality content, reduce burnout, and operate successfully enough to support themselves over the long run.
• Invest in field-wide capabilities (monitoring, audience insights, message testing, and evaluation). Across interviews, one of the clearest gaps was the field’s ability to understand where narratives originate, how they spread, what resonates with different audiences, and what changes minds over time. Building these diagnostic capabilities can help funders and practitioners shift from intuition-driven investments to repeatable strategies grounded in audience behavior and evidence.
• Promote alternatives to tech business models and platforms. This pathway calls for investing in the development and scaling of alternative information channels—digital public infrastructure (e.g., open protocols), business models, and features that are not designed to maximize time-on-site or ad revenue. The aim is to shift the underlying incentives and “rules of the road” so online spaces are more supportive of trustworthy information. 

3. Equip Audiences to Better Interpret Information

Reducing harmful content and strengthening credible sources are critical, but audiences also need support to navigate a fragmented and fast-moving information environment. Funders can help build that resilience by investing in approaches that strengthen people’s ability to judge what they encounter and decide what to trust.

• Improve media and digital literacy. This pathway supports efforts to strengthen people’s ability to assess sources, recognize manipulation, and navigate digital environments. The intended change is audience resilience: reducing susceptibility to misleading content and increasing the likelihood that credible information is recognized and shared.

What Funders Can Do to Get Started

Funders don’t need to tackle the entire information ecosystem at once. A practical starting point is to ask how today’s information dynamics—false and misleading narratives, algorithmic amplification, coordinated manipulation, and low trust—frustrate existing strategies and grantees, and where a healthier ecosystem could accelerate progress. From there, funders can pursue three practical opportunities:

Step out of issue silos. Because information challenges cut across fields, funders can look beyond issue-specific communications strategies to identify shared risks across portfolios. For example, one global funder we spoke with noted that issue-specific efforts across its portfolios, including gender, climate, and human rights, were limiting its ability to respond to shared information challenges. The funder responded by developing a foundation-wide strategy and building an internal case to increase resources dedicated to the issue.

Pick a pathway and start learning. Funders can begin with an entry point that aligns with their mission, capabilities, and risk appetite, rather than waiting for a fully developed information ecosystem strategy. Several funders have seeded efforts to build shared, field-serving capabilities, such as monitoring, audience insights, message testing, and evaluation, which many actors need but few can build alone. These investments can build important infrastructure while helping funders learn what works.

Join with other funders. Because many information ecosystem challenges are structural and cross-sectoral, funders can work through a growing number of collaboratives and pooled funds to address these challenges. Examples include Humanity AI, a pooled philanthropic initiative investing in accountable, inclusive AI that advances the public good, and Nura Fund, which supports efforts to address structural technology harms and strengthen the broader ecosystem. These vehicles allow funders to align resources to address challenges that isolated programmatic responses cannot.

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As the information ecosystem shifts rapidly—with generative AI, new regulatory approaches, and rising public concern reshaping what spreads and which communities trust—early action matters. Interventions in this space are most effective when paired with investments that visibly improve people’s lives and address the conditions that drive distrust. For philanthropy, strengthening the information ecosystem helps protect these investments and increases the likelihood that credible ideas and solutions can travel, compete, and endure.