Mis- and disinformation have once again been named the top global risk of the immediate term in the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risks Report 2025.
This comes just days after Meta announced it’s ending its third-party fact checking functions to address disinformation on its social media platforms.
One year ago, in the 2024 Global Risks Report, WEF shone a spotlight on the risk posed by pervasive mis- and disinformation around the world, listing it as the top global risk for the immediate term or next two years.
The impacts and realities of these risks have been on display in local communities throughout the past year. As we kick off 2025, it’s worth reflecting on the extraordinary breadth of disinformation we’ve witnessed, month by month. Below are just a few of the numerous examples of disinformation in cities.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission, disinformation is “knowingly false information designed to deliberately mislead and influence public opinion or obscure the truth for malicious or deceptive purposes”.
It often comes hand-in-hand with its less malicious but equally destructive cousin, misinformation, which is spreading false information due to “ignorance, or by error or mistake, without the intent to deceive”.
Disinformation is deeply insidious, destructive and rapidly evolving. And cities are increasingly in the firing line.
And so, as much as many of us want to look ahead, it’s worth looking back at a tiny snapshot of disinformation reported in cities throughout 2024 – so we can attempt to avoid the same mistakes in 2025.
Twelve months of disinformation
Disinformation can come in a variety of guises – and we saw many of them throughout 2024.
In January, as we began the ‘global election year’, the World Economic Forum issued a dire prediction, naming mis- and disinformation the world’s top global risk of the immediate term.
In February, a measles outbreak in Broward County, Florida, was linked to lingering anti-vaccine misinformation. This was compounded by statements by the state’s Surgeon General that “could appear to diminish, if not discredit, the use of vaccines”.
In March, disinformation swirled following a terrorist attack that killed over one hundred people in Moscow, Russia. This included misrepresented footage purportedly showing Russian military rehearsing the attack, as well as a variety of false accusations of Ukrainian involvement.
In April, a deepfake recording of a school principal in Baltimore in the US was confirmed by police to be inauthentic. The clip, released in January 2024, included offensive and racist tropes that had already divided the community.
In May, climate disinformation was on show, including that surrounding the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone in London, used to interfere in the Mayoral election.
In June, we saw gendered disinformation in one of its many forms. In this case it was the mass creation of pornographic deepfakes of girls in the Victorian town of Bacchus Marsh.
In July, anti-immigrant riots flared in cities and towns across England, inflamed by disinformation following the murder of children at a dance class in Southport.
In August, postal workers in the New Zealand city of Wellington made headlines for refusing to deliver 80,000 pamphlets that contained disinformation about Muslims and the City Council, fearing that it would harm to community relationships and could lead to violence.
In September, disaster disinformation hampered local emergency response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the US, including claims that the storms were manufactured, that aid was being withheld from Republican voters, and that the government would seize land if people evacuated as advised.
In October, local government elections in the City of La Trobe, Australia, were marred by the use of fake social media accounts targeting candidates. That same month, a Carnegie California report found that “Californians overwhelmingly believe that the spread of misinformation is a threat to their state”.
In November and the latter days of October, Valencia in Spain was devastated by floods. Disinformation included accusations that the Spanish government had created the weather system, deliberately not warned people and accused Morocco of responsibility.
In December, false claims circulated swiftly on social media following the firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia. These rumours ranged from pointing the finger at the far left to accusing agents of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
Bringing together and bridging knowledge
In response to the significant challenges posed by disinformation, the past year has seen extraordinary collaboration and engagement between University of Melbourne scholars and other sectors to understand and inform disinformation response at the city level.
Drawing on the expertise across the University and academic partners, in 2024 researchers delivered the first global Playbook to guide city response to disinformation, in partnership with German Marshall Fund of the United States. This was co-created with 40 multi-sector experts and peer-reviewed by other levels of government.
The Recognising and Managing Disinformation micro-credential was developed and delivered by the Hunt Lab for Security and Intelligence, the Melbourne Centre for Cities and Municipal Association of Victoria.
The project has informed discussions at many levels, from cities to national governments and supranational entities: G7 and UN-HABITAT – the United Nations Human Settlements Program.
Each of the above demonstrates the powerful role that universities and researchers can play in bringing together and bridging knowledge to inform solutions to society’s most pressing challenges.
In 2025, the Disinformation in the City project will continue to grow with the support of Municipal Association of Victoria and the Institute for Infrastructure in Society at the Crawford School for Public Policy at the Australian National University.
The project will continue to harness the expertise of different sectors, cities and levels of government to tackle pressing disinformation challenges at the local level: natural disasters, technology transitions, sustainability and social cohesion.
As reiterated by the World Economic Forum this week, the risks posed by disinformation are going to continue into the foreseeable future. The impacts are experienced locally, and local response remains key.
This article was first published on Pursuit. Read the original article here.
The IPA is holding an online seminar, Key Traits of Thriving SME Accounting Firms, on 6 February. More information here.