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The Information Integrity Initiative
December 8, 2025
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A project from TheNerve's new team of experts designed to defend information integrity in a climate of online toxicity and rising authoritarianism
The Information Integrity Initiative (III) is a new project of TheNerve. It anchors action-oriented research, policy work and product development at the intersection of disinformation, freedom of expression, gender and public interest media.
“The struggle for information integrity is the mother of all battles, and it’s a fight that demands radical collaboration,” TheNerve’s founder Maria Ressa says. This is a view shared by the Information Integrity Initiative’s Director, Professor Julie Posetti (PhD), who leads a team of researchers and policy experts at TheNerve, focused on the most critical challenge of our time.
Professor Posetti’s pioneering work on gender-based online violence, public interest media, and civic efforts to counter disinformation have led to her being recognized as an expert by multiple United Nations (UN) agencies, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and the British Academy.
The III’s current projects include research commissioned by UN Women focused on online violence against women in public life, the development of an Online Violence Alert and Response System being trialled in major international newsrooms, and a suite of country-based studies focused on public interest media efforts to “disarm” disinformation.
“The struggle for information integrity is the mother of all battles, and it’s a fight that demands radical collaboration." - Maria Ressa, TheNerve Founder
Our Reports:
Tipping Point: The chilling escalation of violence against women in the public sphere
New research produced for UN Women in partnership with TheNerve has revealed a dangerous trajectory, with over 40% of women journalists, human rights defenders and activists experiencing offline attacks, abuse and harassment linked to online violence. That figure for women journalists has more than doubled - to 42% - since 2020.
And 70% of the women surveyed have experienced online violence - rising to 75% for women journalists - in the course of their work according to The Tipping Point: The Chilling Escalation of Online Violence Against Women in the Public Sphere. Meanwhile, one quarter of the women participants from 119 countries said they had experienced AI-assisted abuse.
Read the full report here.
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