Countering Disinformation Effectively: An Evidence-Based Policy Guide

Bateman and Jackson's policy guide is the most rigorous evidence-based synthesis of counter-disinformation interventions available in the grey literature. Drawing on a systematic review of the empirical research, the authors evaluate what actually works — prebunking, media literacy, content moderation, platform design changes, legal frameworks — and what the evidence actually supports versus what policymakers assume. The result is a guide that is unusually willing to identify failure: many widely-deployed interventions have weak or contested evidence bases, and the authors say so.

The guide is structured around a taxonomy of intervention types, making it directly useful for policy design. For practitioners advising governments or institutions on counter-disinformation programmes, this is the essential starting point: it maps the intervention landscape, evaluates each category against the available evidence, and identifies the gaps where more research is needed before investment is justified. Carnegie's willingness to publish a guide that challenges the assumptions of the counter-disinformation establishment — including Carnegie-funded work — gives it unusual credibility. Required reading before designing any counter-disinformation programme.