MIF receives three-year, $300,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Media Impact Funders has received a three-year, $300,000 general-operating grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic institutions in the U.S. Read More

Last month, just two days after the inauguration of our 46th president and first female vice president, the nation marked another milestone — the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding access to safe abortion as a woman’s constitutional right. Read More

In our second collaborative webinar, Media Impact Funders and Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement Funders (PACE) convened thought leaders from across the Infogagement landscape to discuss how driving civic engagement in today’s interconnected media landscape requires re-building public trust. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter changed the landscape of democracy, granting widespread access to public discourse, and empowering citizens to create change in new ways.  But what began as tools to amplify new voices has also given way to the spread of disinformation, deepening polarization, and ultimately, dampening civic engagement. Speakers: Kelly Born, Program Officer for the Madison Initiative, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Jenny Choi, Director, Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY Talia Stroud, Associate Professor, Department of Communications Studies,The University of Texas at Austin Watch the webinar below:… Read More

This week, Media Impact Funders continued its series of funder conversations to connect grantmakers with research, strategy and practice in science communications with its latest webinar that attempts to understand how behavioral science can help curb the spread of misinformation. Watch the webinar here and use the time stamps below to follow along in the recording: The webinar featured: Vince Stehle (1:21), executive director of Media Impact Funders, who provided context for the discussion, outlining four areas of concern for funders looking to understand and stop the spread of misinformation and disinformation online: 1. Better definitions of evaluation 2. The use of popular culture to communicate with new and diverse audiences 3. Better understanding audiences. 4. Building connections between research and practice. Elizabeth Christopherson (3:46), president of the Rita Allen Foundation and vice chair of MIF, who talked about the foundation’s perspective on understanding and combating misinformation, and the Misinformation Solutions Forum it organized in collaboration with the Aspen Institute. The Forum brought together academic researchers, technology professionals, data scientists, journalists, educators, community leaders, funders and 12 graduate student fellows to explore six promising ideas for curbing the spread of misinformation. Read more about the Misinformation Solutions Forum. Read More

Since October, MIF has been hosting a webinar series organized by Kelly Born of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation on how funders can support remedies for the deluge of false facts faced by news consumers. Read More

How central are social and search platforms in spreading propaganda and misinformation—and what can be done to improve the quality of online information? To explore these questions, Kelly Born of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation hosted the second in a series of webinars about how funders can help fight “fake news.” (Read the recap of the first webinar here.) Read More

While Americans’ faith in news media overall has been falling, they tend to trust the media that they like and pay for. So, in an effort to increase consumption of reliable journalism, how can funders support the production of trustworthy news? Read More

Update as of Dec. 19, 2017—We have completed our webinar series. Read up on the various ways in which funders are fighting misinformation on the three points of the information system: production, distribution and consumption. By Kelly Born | Program officer for the Madison Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation “Fake news” continues to spread like wildfire across the western world, and American philanthropy is at the forefront of the battle to address it. From the recent prototype fund sponsored by the Knight and Rita Allen Foundations and the Democracy Fund, to the Gates, Ford, and Knight Foundations’ collaboration with Democracy Fund in support of CUNY’s News Integrity Initiative, to Craig Newmark and others’ investment in Poynter’s fact-checking initiative, many in philanthropy are seeking to help mitigate the effects of disinformation and propaganda. Read More

By Kelly Born | Program Officer, Madison Initiative, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Democracy and the Internet may not be as compatible as many had hoped. The “fake news” allegations of 2016 re-focused attention on longer-standing concerns about echo chambers, filter bubbles, declining journalistic revenue models and a range of issues in the online information space. Read More