Online environments are no longer peripheral to civic life. They are where many people now encounter political ideas, form identities, find belonging and make sense of the world around them. Platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X and gaming communities are not simply communication tools; they are cultural spaces that increasingly shape how communities connect, organise and respond to social change.
At London Funders’ January Insight Meeting, members came together to reflect on what this shift means for funders working across social justice, democracy, community resilience, children and young people, and wellbeing. The session was framed as a space for collective sense-making, recognising that digital culture raises complex questions about risk, role and relevance that many funders are still actively working through.
One strong theme was how dramatically the information environment has changed. Digital platforms have reduced the scarcity that once shaped public communication. Where journalism, education and politics were previously mediated by relatively stable institutions and norms, today’s online spaces are more open, commercialised and weakly constrained. This has enabled the rapid growth of personality-driven ecosystems that blur entertainment, commentary and political meaning, often operating at a speed and scale that legacy institutions struggle to match.
Our panellists reflected on how UK civic life is increasingly shaped by global - particularly US-based - platforms and narratives. Online spaces are not nationally bounded, nor easily regulated through domestic policy, creating challenges for accountability and democratic oversight. At the same time, attention-driven business models reward outrage and simplification, weakening trusted sources of information such as local journalism and placing further pressure on public institutions.
The erosion of shared truth emerged as a critical concern. Panellists described an information environment in which commonly agreed facts are under sustained attack, producing what has been described as “disordered discourse”. Conspiracy narratives were understood not simply as misinformation, but as emotionally coherent stories that offer explanations, identity and belonging in a context where institutions are widely mistrusted or seen as failing.
Education emerged as a key pressure point within these systems. The traditional model of knowledge being mediated through trusted adults, institutions and curricula is increasingly disrupted by material flowing directly from online spaces into classrooms. Teachers are often required to respond to misinformation, conspiracy narratives or contested claims that originate outside formal education, sometimes without clear guidance, training or evidence about what effective intervention looks like.
Teachers themselves are not immune to misinformation, and there is limited understanding of how prepared schools are to respond in ways that genuinely build resilience for both staff and students. Early work in this area, including research supported by Pears Foundation, highlights the complexity of the challenge and the need for sustained, system-wide approaches rather than isolated or short-term interventions.
For funders, this raises emerging questions about how to support teachers, schools and young people to navigate a contested information environment, and how education, youth engagement and civic resilience intersect in an increasingly digital context.
Across the discussion, there was a shared recognition that the world is now irreversibly hybrid. Online and offline experiences are deeply intertwined, with signs of declining confidence in offline civic interaction, alongside growing reliance on digital spaces for meaning-making and participation. Many institutions, including charities, universities and political organisations, were seen as operating with communications models that are more than a decade behind current reality, still oriented towards broadcast and information control, rather than open dialogue, trust-building and sustained audience engagement.
This creates a strategic challenge for funders. Much funding remains focused on offline services and formal organisational forms, while many upstream drivers of harm now sit within digital culture and information ecosystems. Participants explored questions about how far funders should engage with issues such as platform accountability, crisis readiness, information resilience and local media innovation, and whether there is a role for supporting non-commercial, community-owned digital spaces that prioritise public value over profit.
The discussion also surfaced difficult questions about influence and scale. Well-resourced ideological networks have built dense ecosystems of amplification and loyalty around personalities and narratives. This prompted reflection on whether civil society and social justice actors need to think differently about influence, storytelling and trusted messengers, without compromising values or integrity.
Finally, the meeting returned to trust and belonging. While national narratives about Britain are often bleak, people consistently report stronger attachment and optimism at local and community levels. This suggests opportunities for funding approaches that support co-created storytelling, local knowledge and moderated spaces, including online, where people can have honest conversations, ask questions and build understanding.
Rather than aiming to land solutions, the session sharpened a shared diagnosis. The information environment is already reshaping civic life, institutions are misaligned with lived digital reality, and funders face an inflection point. The work ahead is less about quick fixes and more about building long-term resilience, capacity and confidence to engage with an online-first world that is already shaping the communities and causes funders exist to support.
Our thanks to everyone who joined the session and contributed to such a thoughtful and engaged discussion. We are especially grateful to Hannah Perry, Amy Braier and Alan Finlayson for their time, preparation and openness, and for the generosity with which they shared their insights, research and reflections.
Further reading and resources
Several of the speakers shared research and tools during and after the session that may be useful for funders, policymakers and civil society organisations seeking to deepen their understanding of digital culture, misinformation and civic life.
- Countering Conspiracies (Public First)
Research examining how conspiracy narratives form, spread and take hold, and what approaches may help counter them effectively. An updated version is due in March. - Epistemic Security for Crisis Resilience (Demos)
Research exploring how societies can strengthen their information environments to better withstand crises and moments of uncertainty. - Epistemic Security 2029: Fortifying the UK’s Information Supply Chain (Demos)
A foundational paper setting out systemic threats to the information environment and the institutional changes needed to address them. - Driving Disinformation (Demos)
Analysis of how disinformation operates within local information environments, with a focus on communities facing structural disadvantage. - Epistemic Security Briefing: The Elections Bill (Demos)
A policy briefing examining vulnerabilities in the information environment during elections and periods of democratic stress. - Conspiracy Loops (Demos)
Research exploring how conspiracy narratives reinforce themselves over time, and how emotional and social dynamics sustain belief. - Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools (Pears Foundation)
This Commission, supported by Pears Foundation, explored how online conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation manifest in schools and affect teachers, parents and young people, and what support is required. - Centre for Digital Information Literacy in Schools (National Institute of Teaching, supported by Pears Foundation)
A national multi-year initiative to equip educators with the knowledge, confidence and tools to teach and lead effectively in an age of misinformation.