Information Integrity and Public Trust
The Global Risks Forum (GRF)
Information integrity is the study of how accurate, reliable information is produced, shared and trusted, and of what degrades it. Public trust research asks why people trust some sources and not others, and how trust in institutions is built and lost. As a field of Information Integrity and Public Trust, it focuses on information under systemic stress: crises, rapid technological change and polarised environments. This overview sets out why it matters and what experts study.
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GeographyFor discipline and institutional issues, in GRF's situational-awareness reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and flood water, framed on Eastern Europe; 2 further NASA layers wait in the list.
The Information Integrity and Public Trust field covers trust, information quality, media governance and public communication under systemic stress and technological change. Experts in it study questions such as misinformation and disinformation and institutional trust, with methods such as social and behavioural science as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its counterparts at GCRI and GRA look at the same systems through science and finance.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Every response to a shared risk, from a flood warning to a public health measure to a long-term climate policy, depends on people understanding the situation and trusting those who explain it. Information that is false, misleading or simply absent can cost lives in a crisis and erode support for necessary policy over time.
The field is also about rights. Access to information and freedom of expression are fundamental, and measures to counter harmful information can themselves cause harm if they silence legitimate speech, entrench official narratives or are applied unequally. A credible field must study both the harms of degraded information and the risks of responses to it.
How false and misleading content arises, spreads and affects behaviour. See Misinformation and disinformation and AI-generated information.
How media and platform business models and design shape what people see. See Platforms and media systems.
Why people trust institutions and sources, and what erodes or rebuilds trust. See Institutional trust.
How to communicate risk and uncertainty honestly, in crises and in science. See Crisis information and Science communication.
Who can access reliable information, and how governance protects rights. See Community information and Information governance and rights.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Misinformation | False or misleading information that people share without any intent to deceive. |
| Coordinated inauthentic behaviour | Groups of accounts working together to mislead people about who they are and what they are doing, as platforms use the term. |
| Content provenance | Verifiable information about the origin and edit history of a piece of digital media. |
| Systemic risk | Risk arising from interconnections, where failure in one part can cascade through a whole system. |
Information integrity affects every domain where public understanding matters: health, disasters, climate, elections, finance and technology. Decision rights locates who decides on information governance questions.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.