Innovating Resilience to Disinformation

Our winter 2026 Buffett Symposium on disinformation convened global experts and practitioners from industry, public policy, academia, and civil society to address four urgent priorities: sustaining trust and credibility in information flows; strengthening accountability for platforms, governments, and users alike; advancing innovative tools and strategies to counter disinformation; and forging multi-sector collaboration to build resilient information ecosystems worldwide.

This panel brought together leading voices from psychological science, industry, and fact-checking to explore cutting-edge strategies and innovation for strengthening societies’ resilience against evolving disinformation threats.

Panelists included:

• Gordon Pennycook, Associate Professor of Psychology and Dorothy & Ariz Mehta Faculty Leadership Fellow, Cornell University
• Andrew Pel, Head of Campaigns, Moonshot
• Laura Zommer, Co-Founder and CEO, Factchequeado; Founder, LatamChequea
• Moderated by Erik Nisbet, Owen L. Coon Professor of Policy Analysis & Communication, Director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy, School of Communication, Northwestern University

Key Takeaways

• Psychological inoculation — exposing people to weakened forms of manipulation techniques before they encounter them — shows real promise as a scalable resilience intervention, but no single approach is sufficient on its own. Pel described Moonshot's video-based prebunking campaigns, which reached hundreds of millions of people across the EU, Indonesia, and Ukraine, and produced measurable gains in people's ability to detect manipulation techniques like scapegoating and fear-mongering. Pennycook added that AI-assisted debunking can also be remarkably effective: in a study published in Science, GPT-4 conversations reduced conspiracy belief in roughly a quarter of participants, with effects holding at both ten days and two months later. Both panelists acknowledged key limitations — prebunking effects can decay over time, and debunking addresses specific beliefs without making people more broadly rational — underscoring Zommer's point that these tools work best in combination with trusted, community-rooted information networks.
• Reaching the people who most need accurate information requires investing in trusted messengers, not just better content. Zommer described how Factchequeado built a network of 141 local media partners and grassroots organizations to deliver fact-checked content to Spanish-speaking communities in the US through the platforms they actually use — WhatsApp, YouTube, and TikTok. A key insight is that trust must be built before a crisis hits: audiences are far more likely to engage with accurate information during elections or emergencies if a relationship with a trusted source already exists. All three panelists agreed that fact-checking by professional journalists remains indispensable, but that expanding delivery through content creators and community influencers is increasingly essential for reaching audiences traditional media cannot.
• The most urgent near-term investment is in truth-tellers — and the most important long-term investment is in critical thinking education. Pennycook argued that all psychological and technological interventions ultimately depend on there being good, accurate information in the environment to begin with, making sustained investment in journalism and fact-checking the essential foundation. Looking further ahead, panelists converged on the need for media literacy education that begins in schools and reaches across generations — teaching people not just to identify specific falsehoods, but to develop habits of reflection and lateral reading that make them more discerning information consumers over time. Pel pointed to promising nonpartisan models in Canada and elsewhere, while Zommer cautioned that even the best educational interventions will struggle without platforms designed to support rather than undermine informed engagement.