Confronting the information crisis
While political leaders are normalizing violence, our partners are documenting its effects.
Reclaiming the narrative
Since our last edition of the Checklist, the U.S. and Israel have launched a war on Iran that has subsumed countries across North Africa and Western Asia, where Meedan has maintained deep roots since its inception in 2006. Members of our current team live in and hail from Lebanon, which is under daily bombardment. As we grapple with the constant uncertainties this brings, we are also stepping back to consider what role information integrity plays in a regional war of this magnitude.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Meedan Executive Director Dima Saber offered this reflection:
What makes this moment different is not only the scale — nearly 20% of the Lebanese population is now displaced — but the openness with which destruction is narrated. [In an essay for Global Voices,] Walid [El Houri] documents how US and Israeli officials are not merely committing atrocities but announcing them in advance: threats to make Iran impossible to rebuild, a senator invoking Hiroshima, a defense secretary declaring that the only Iranians who need to worry are those who think they will survive.
This rhetoric is doing exactly what it is designed to do: normalizing violence and public hate speech in ways that were inconceivable only a few years ago.
This leaves us with what Dima describes as not only a humanitarian crisis but a crisis of information. How do we promote connection and understanding as we confront this paradigm? To answer this question, we look to our partners, who are holding violent actors to account for the harms that they are unleashing.
The Legal Agenda has established that Israel’s mass evacuation orders in southern Lebanon constitute forced displacement that may amount to war crimes. The Public Source and Public Works Studio have mapped what bombs leave behind — not just rubble, but burned woodlands, poisoned soil, and the deliberate destruction of the conditions for life itself. Sifr condemned the use of artificial intelligence as a weapon of mass killing, operating without any legal framework and dissolving accountability into algorithms and legislative silence. SMEX documented the entanglement of civilian and military digital infrastructure, warning that tech companies cannot simultaneously serve as the backbone of a region’s digital economy and as a military enabler, and expect that distinction to hold during a war.
What does this mean for us? At Meedan, we build tools for the people doing this work — the journalists, frontline defenders, and researchers documenting and speaking out against human rights violations — who are targeted precisely because their documentation matters. As the normalization of atrocity continues to permeate media narratives and our daily lives, we walk alongside those partners in solidarity with their commitment to holding power to account.
Meedan marks 20 years
This month, Meedan marked the 20th anniversary of its official establishment as a U.S.-based nonprofit organization. In recognition of this milestone, we invited staff and collaborators to share memories of our early days and visions for the future.
Where to find us this month
The Palestine Digital Activism Forum will bring together activists, researchers, and tech experts focused on Palestine and the Arab region. This event will be held online from March 30-31, and it will feature discussions on fact-checking and deepfakes in wartime and social media platform accountability, as well as a panel on Palestinian representation in global AI frameworks moderated by Meedan Executive Director Dima Saber.
The Online News Association (ONA) will hold its next event in Chicago from March 30 to April 1. Meedan Strategic Partnerships Director Megan Marrelli will be at ONA talking with partners about how AI is reshaping newsroom workflows, audience relationships, revenue models, and more. Coming to ONA? Find a time to meet with Meg.
Contact us to explore collaboration opportunities.
Townsquare
April 15-18
The International Journalism Festival will take place once again in Perugia, Italy, bringing together journalists, researchers, and industry experts to discuss bold experiments in reporting, technology, and much more. The event is free and open to the public.
April 20-22
The Reporting on AI Intensive is designed for reporters who grasp AI, spend a significant amount of their time covering technology, and want to go deeper. This Pulitzer Center event is an interactive, virtual workshop supported by Project Multatuli and the Alliance of Independent Journalists, and it’s geared toward journalists in Asia’s time zones.
April 21-24
The Skoll World Forum shines a spotlight on impactful social innovations and connects leaders who are driving social progress around the world. In-person attendance is curated by the Skoll Foundation team, with free virtual participation open to everyone. We’ll be in Oxford, England, for the event.
What we’re reading
“We live in a world where real photographs of real civilian deaths are called fake, and where fake images are used to illustrate real deaths. Where correct identification of one fake image is used to cast doubt on real images, where incorrect detection is authoritative, and where all of it happens faster than any institution, newsroom, fact-checker, photo wire service, or platform can process. The fog of AI does not need every piece of content to be fabricated. It needs the question Is this real? to become close to unanswerable.”
(Mahsa Alimardani, The Atlantic)
“The systematic targeting of women through technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) following Bangladesh’s July-August 2024 uprising represents a coordinated digital warfare strategy designed to intimidate and silence female voices. This comprehensive analysis of fourteen prominent female activists, ranging from a multitude of professions who were active and played a crucial role in the uprising, reveals a sophisticated and patriarchal ecosystem of disinformation that weaponizes cultural taboos, advanced digital manipulation technologies, and platform vulnerabilities to systematically exclude women from democratic participation.”
(Shuvashish Das Ray Dip, Rahul Roy, and Minhaj Aman, Activate Rights)
“Mwangi’s arbitrary arrest and the use of Cellebrite’s forensic technology in the context of this arrest and without consent likely violates both regional and international human rights law and the Kenyan constitution, which protects fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association, assembly, demonstration, picketing, and petition. The actions of the Kenyan government against Mwangi have been widely criticized by human rights organizations.”
(John Scott-Railton, Bill Marczak, Maia Scott, Siena Anstis, and Ron Deibert, Citizen Lab)
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