International_Panel_on_the_Information_Environment
International Panel on the Information Environment
US non-profit organization
The International Panel on the Information Environment is an international consortium of over 250 experts[1] from 55 countries dedicated to providing actionable scientific knowledge on threats to our information landscape. The IPIE has said it is modeled after and learning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[2] The concept was officially proposed in a 2021 virtual meeting by Dr. Sheldon Himelfarb, then President and CEO of PeaceTech Lab,[3] and Professor Philip Howard, Professor at Oxford University and then Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, during the first Nobel Prize Summit organized by the US National Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation.[4]
Himmelfarb and Howard (2021) reported several motivations for launching IPIE including the following:
- Misinformation is reducing the effectiveness of vaccines.
- Foreign interference has impacted the 2016 and 2020 US elections.
- Mobs in India, South Sudan, Myanmar, and Mexico have killed innocent people because of misinformation spread on Facebook.
- False claims of electoral fraud have eroded public confidence in elections, causing damage that can’t simply be mitigated through fact-checking on social media platforms. This is a global crisis for democracy.
IPIE was legally registered in Switzerland in 2023.[5]