Writing
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Reading the 2025 environmental progress reports from tech companies like Alibaba, Google, Meta, or Microsoft, it feels as if climate data is increasingly treated like financial data. Emissions are growing, rather than being mitigated. The marketing narratives in these progress reports have always been flashy, emphasising wins and progress however small they may be in
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Building on two years of research and all the insights our team gathered in the course of our work together, Kai Unzicker and I condensed our thinking into a policy brief that outlines 10 ideas for better dealing with the challenges of disinformation. We took the opportunity to present these ideas during an international networking
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Tech companies and their climate pledges. The 2024 AI edition. I’ve been closely following the climate commitments and reduction targets by the tech sector for years now—I was even cautiously optimistic for a brief moment last year. Not now. The latest environmental reports from Alibaba, Google, Microsoft and co. are disconcerting. Meta hasn’t even released
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Updated to provide all 8 links. Two years ago, we were tasked with exploring a new field of research and activities for the Bertelsmann Stiftung: countering disinformation. We launched Upgrade Democracy and set out to explore various angles and topics, but most importantly potential opportunities to fill critical gaps. The questions we asked ourselves included:
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Disinformation does not stop at borders. Countermeasures must therefore be just as international and interlinked. But are they? As part of Upgrade Democracy, we investigated this question in close cooperation with regional research partners in order to gain an overview of the global landscape of anti-disinformation initiatives and to identify commonalities and differences that will
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“There is a continuous slate of articles, features, and other coverage that tackle “disinformation” in light of the super election year of 2024. Again and again people are asking: Can targeted disinformation campaigns manipulate opinions and influence elections? We are obviously asking ourselves these questions, too. At the same time, we want to know in
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Headline after headline is pointing to the critical importance of 2024 as a super election year for democracies around the world. Many of the relevant analyses point to the multifaceted challenges to our electoral processes, including due to digital disinformation campaigns. Thankfully, there are a great number of topical experts, fact-checkers, researchers, innovators, and digital
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At the beginning of 2023, my team and I kicked off our international research into good practices for countering disinformation online. This research was enriched by regional field engagements, consisting of workshops and bilateral discussions with decision-makers, experts, and relevant stakeholders, who we brought together in one comparatively central location in each region. The goal
Cathleen Berger 