On February 9, more than 100 environmental and climate activists, scientists, media experts, and journalists gathered at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv for a high-level event on combating disinformation and misinformation threats to the global climate action efforts. Organized by ISOC-IL in collaboration with Greenpeace Israel and the Climate Science and Technology Forum, the day featured expert lectures, practical workshops, fact-checking training, and strategic discussions to bolster digital resilience and collective efforts to fight disinformation and media manipulation on environmental issues.
The Conference opened with expert talks on the intertwined media-information and climate crises: Edan Ring, VP of Community Affairs at ISOC-IL addressed eroding public trust; Tamar Zandberg, former Environmental Protection Minister of Israel, from the Institute for Climate and Environmental Policy at Ben Gurion University in the Negev presented key public opinion polls; Greenpeace outlined climate denial tactics; Professor Alon Tal from the Climate Science Forum explored the psychological motives in climate change denial; and independent journalist Tomer Avital discussed critical thinking tools.
A hands-on workshop led by Nitsan Yasur, ISOC-IL’s Disinformation and Digital Investigations Lead, provided practical training in fact-checking and online investigations. The conference also featured a dynamic panel with Nir Rosen from Fake Reporter, Dr. Avner Gross from the National Platform for Climate Change, Shir Shafran from The Green Network, moderated by journalist and TV weather forecaster Sharon Wechsler, who discussed turning disinformation detection into actionable advocacy. The full program is available here.
With senior professionals from environmental NGOs, academia, media organizations, and civil society in the room, the Conference’s standout achievement was expanding the field, integrating diverse new players into a shared effort to safeguard information reliability at a time of growing reliance on social networks and artificial intelligence. It illustrated the value of multistakeholder collaboration: when science, media, and civil society work side by side, communities are better equipped to identify manipulation, strengthen online resilience, and create a more trustworthy information environment.
This conference is part of the broader Disinformation Resilience Israel (DRI) project, led by ISOC-IL with support from the European Union. The project seeks to bolster fact-finding capacity among media and civil society organizations, raise public awareness, promote media literacy, and drive forward research to build a more informed, critical, and inclusive information ecosystem.
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