Trends in the Information Environment: 2025 Expert Survey Results

The IPIE's 2025 expert survey — covering 438 researchers from 76 countries — provides the most geographically comprehensive available baseline of how the global research community assesses the current information environment. The headline finding is stark: 72% of respondents expected the information environment to worsen, a nine-point increase from 2024 and an 18-point increase since the first survey in 2023. The trajectory of expert pessimism is itself analytically significant — it documents a research community that has become progressively more alarmed about the information environment even as institutional attention and counter-measures have increased.

The platform accountability finding is the report's most policy-relevant result: 75% of experts consider the lack of platform accountability a major threat — the highest-rated threat in the survey. The comparative assessment of different platform types is also important: a majority consider social media to have made polarisation worse while also promoting political participation, while search engines are assessed more positively than recommender systems or AI. For policymakers and practitioners who need to understand how the expert community currently reads the information environment, this survey provides the most systematic available snapshot.