--- title: "Organisations Worth Supporting" description: "Who else is working on this, how they differ, and what this list leaves out: journalism, digital rights, democracy, media literacy." url: https://attentionmachine.org/en/share/organisations/ lang: en updated: 2026-10-23 license: "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)" --- # Organisations Worth Supporting Individual action has limits. This site is one node in a broader effort, and the organisations below are working on structural change — the kind that scales. This is the site's one list of who is doing that work, what each one does, and how they differ from each other. ## What is not on this list Two kinds of organisation are left out on purpose, and saying which makes the rest of the list easier to read. **Fact-checkers:** debunking — correcting false claims after they circulate — is valuable, but it arrives after the falsehood has travelled and must be repeated claim by claim; prebunking (building resistance to manipulation techniques before exposure) is where this site puts its weight; fact-checkers do different work. **Bias-rating services:** the "brand approach" to media evaluation (rating outlets by perceived political leaning) contradicts the process argument this site makes — the question is never which outlet, but what process produced the content. The list is short for a third reason: it names the organisations whose work this site relies on or sends readers to, not everyone in the field. A directory that tried to be complete would be out of date within a year and would tell you nothing about which door to open first. ## Closest to this site's work Five organisations sit closest to what this site does, and they divide the work between them. The Center for Humane Technology, co-founded by the former technology-industry insiders Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, with Randima Fernando, carries the mechanism into policy and industry reform; its podcast _Your Undivided Attention_ is the most accessible way in. DROG's Bad News game[^src-bad-news] teaches six documented manipulation techniques from the inside, by putting the player in the role of a fake-news producer, and the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab[^src-cambridge-social] is where the inoculation research behind it was done. EUvsDisinfo[^src-euvsdisinfo-east], run by the East StratCom Task Force of the EU's diplomatic service, keeps the searchable record of documented pro-Kremlin disinformation cases: an official project with one adversary in view, and useful for exactly that. The Commissariaat voor de Media[^src-commissariaat-media-2026] is a regulator rather than a campaigner: it concluded in May 2026 that algorithmic feeds are "demonstrably risky for our democracy" and published a roadmap for making recommendation algorithms serve democratic opinion formation. - [Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab](https://www.sdmlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk) Global — The academic home of prebunking research. - [Center for Humane Technology](https://humanetech.com) Global — Co-founded by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, former tech industry insiders, with Randima Fernando. - [DROG / Bad News](https://getbadnews.com) Global — Dutch organisation that developed the Bad News game in collaboration with Cambridge University researchers. - [EUvsDisinfo](https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-cases/) EU — The EU East StratCom Task Force's live database of documented disinformation cases, primarily but not exclusively Russian-origin. - [Commissariaat voor de Media (CvdM)](https://www.cvdm.nl) NL — The Dutch independent media regulator. ## Investigative journalism Reporting that takes months and may find nothing is the part of the press that advertising least wants to pay for, which is why these outlets are funded by readers and donors instead. - [ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)](https://icij.org) Global — The Panama Papers, the Pandora Papers. Cross-border investigative journalism that holds global power accountable. Non-profit, member-supported. - [The Bureau of Investigative Journalism](https://tbij.com) UK — UK-based non-profit investigative journalism. Donor-supported. - [ProPublica](https://propublica.org) US — Non-profit investigative journalism in the US public interest. Free to read, donor-supported. Pulitzer Prize-winning. ## Digital rights The organisations that litigate, write submissions and build tools on surveillance, platform accountability and privacy. - [Access Now](https://accessnow.org) Global — International digital rights organisation, particularly strong on surveillance in non-Western contexts. - [Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://eff.org) Global — The leading digital rights organisation. Works on surveillance law, platform accountability, and privacy. Produces practical tools (Cover Your Tracks) and policy advocacy. - [PHAROS — internet-signalement.gouv.fr](https://www.internet-signalement.gouv.fr/) FR — The French government’s platform for reporting illegal content online to the police and gendarmerie, open to adults and minors. Not for emergencies: call 17 (French). ## Democracy and disinformation Research on how manipulation spreads, and on what an information environment has to look like for democratic argument to work at all. - [Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)](https://isdglobal.org) Global — Research on extremism, disinformation, and hate speech online. Produces some of the most detailed platform-specific research available. - [Mozilla Foundation](https://foundation.mozilla.org) Global — The non-profit behind Firefox. Research and advocacy for a more trustworthy internet. ## Media literacy The teaching end of the same problem: the people who put prebunking in front of classrooms, families and newsrooms. - [CLEMI](https://www.clemi.fr/) FR — The body in charge of media and information literacy across the French school system since 1983, with classroom resources, teacher training and guides for families (French). - [Netwerk Mediawijsheid](https://netwerkmediawijsheid.nl/) NL — The Dutch national media-literacy network, set up by the Ministry of Education in 2008, with over 1,000 partner organisations: knowledge and tools for professionals, the Week van de Mediawijsheid and the annual Mediawijsheid Kennisdag (Dutch). - [Information Futures Lab](https://sites.brown.edu/informationfutures/) US — The successor to First Draft (which closed in 2022), at Brown University's School of Public Health: research and training on misinformation and verification. - [News Literacy Project](https://newslit.org) US — US-focused media literacy education for schools. > **Prebunking vs debunking** > > _Debunking_ corrects a false claim after it has spread; _prebunking_ builds resistance to the manipulation technique _before_ you meet it, so you recognise the move when it arrives. Prebunking is the inoculation idea applied at scale — and the reason this site teaches techniques rather than maintaining a running list of false claims to correct. > > **Sources** > > - [Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab](https://www.sdmlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk) — inoculation/prebunking research. **Deeper — why this list favours prebunking, and why no bias-ratings** Two editorial choices on this page follow directly from the site's argument. First, **prebunking over debunking**: the inoculation research[^src-roozenbeek-2022] (van der Linden's lab[^src-cambridge-social], the Bad News evaluations[^src-roozenbeek-2019]) finds that teaching people to spot manipulation tactics produces resistance that transfers across topics and lasts[^src-maertens-2021], where correcting individual false claims is slower, arrives after the falsehood has travelled, and in some experiments has entrenched it — the "backfire effect" Nyhan and Reifler[^src-nyhan-2010] reported, which is contested: Wood and Porter[^src-wood-2019], testing 52 issues on more than 10,100 people, found no correction that triggered it. Debunking and fact-checking still do necessary work — this is a question of emphasis and leverage, not of one being worthless. Second, **no media bias-rating services**. Rating outlets by perceived political leaning treats trustworthiness as a property of the brand. The site's whole case is that reliability is a property of the _process_ — verification, transparency, correction — not the masthead. A bias chart answers "which side is this outlet on?"; the more useful question is "what process produced this specific claim, and can it be checked?" ## Sources [^src-roozenbeek-2022]: Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S. et al. (2022), [_Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media_](https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abo6254), Science Advances 8(34) — the inoculation evidence behind prebunking: short prebunking videos, tested in the lab and in a YouTube field study. [^src-bad-news]: [Bad News](https://getbadnews.com) (DROG, with Cambridge University) — the browser game that teaches six manipulation techniques from the inside. [^src-cambridge-social]: [Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab](https://www.sdmlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk) — the lab behind the inoculation and prebunking research. [^src-commissariaat-media-2026]: [Commissariaat voor de Media](https://www.cvdm.nl/nieuws/nieuw-rapport-commissariaat-naar-democratisch-gezonde-feeds/), [_Naar democratisch gezonde feeds_](https://www.cvdm.nl/documents/3858/Naar_democratisch_gezonde_feeds.pdf) (May 2026) — the "demonstrably risky for our democracy" finding and the roadmap. [^src-euvsdisinfo-east]: [EUvsDisinfo](https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-cases/) — the EU East StratCom Task Force's database of documented pro-Kremlin disinformation cases. [^src-roozenbeek-2019]: Roozenbeek, J. & van der Linden, S. (2019), [_Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation_](https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0279-9), Palgrave Communications 5(65) — the Bad News evaluation, 15,000 players; the six techniques the game teaches. [^src-maertens-2021]: Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Basol, M. & van der Linden, S. (2021), [_Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments_](https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000315), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 27(1) — how long the effect holds: stable for at least three months with regular testing; faded within two months without. [^src-nyhan-2010]: Nyhan, B. & Reifler, J. (2010), [_When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions_](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2), Political Behavior 32(2) — the "backfire effect": in several of their experiments, a correction strengthened the misperception among the participants most strongly committed to it. [^src-wood-2019]: Wood, T. & Porter, E. (2019), [_The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes’ Steadfast Factual Adherence_](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9443-y), Political Behavior 41(1) — five experiments, more than 10,100 people, 52 issues: no correction triggered backfire. 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