False and misleading information tends to surge during major societal crises, and social media has made that surge faster, wider, and harder to contain. These “mega-crises”—events that shake whole societies, like pandemics, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or wars—create conditions of fear, uncertainty, and information overload, which are exactly the conditions under which falsehoods thrive. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, false claims about the virus’s origins, its deadliness, and the motives behind government policies spread across platforms at staggering speed. Yet despite the obvious importance of understanding this problem, research has remained oddly fragmented. Scholars in psychology, computer science, medicine,…

On 2 October 2026, inside the wood-panelled grandeur of Mansion House, the Lady Mayor’s Defence & Resilience Showcase opened with an unusual ask. Everyone who walked through the doors was given a pot of virtual currency and invited to spend it on the technology companies they believed showed the greatest promise. It was a deliberately interactive way of making a point: in the market for security and resilience, attention and capital flow towards whatever feels most credible in the moment. In a room full of defence hardware, cyber capabilities, and established industrial names, a counter-disinformation company called Refute could easily…