Advising policymakers at all levels

Our advocacy is grounded in what we hear directly from communities in classrooms, across countries and languages. Coupled with our team’s expertise and cross-border networks, this approach makes us coveted advisors to policy debates and decision-making processes that center on media, education and digital rights. Lie Detectors sees key value in engaging at intergovernmental and national levels as well as regional and local level. Some of our most active interlocutors are mayors and local authorities.

Lie Detectors sees an urgent need to make facts great again. We work across Europe to confront the drivers of disinformation and pernicious polarisation that threaten to send democracies backsliding. 
 
Our approach runs on two tracks: strengthening citizens’ resilience through digital media literacy, and holding to account large online platforms whose opaque business models need immediate reform.  
 
Alongside our classroom programming, we advocate for digital media literacy to be integrated into all curricula, for this critical skill to be added as a core literacy alongside reading, writing and counting.

Citizens and educators should not shoulder this burden alone. So we also press for accountability from large online platforms to ensure their algorithms and profit models serve the public interest rather than undermine it.

Disrupting the outrage economy: Key policy recommendations

  • Cross-curricular priority

    Integrate media literacy training into all school and teacher-training curricula; OECD/PISA should assess critical media literacy as core literacy.

  • Combat the financial drivers of disinformation

    Take action against the algorithms of online platforms that create polarisation and the use of behavioural data.

  • Sustainability in education

    Ensure measurability of media literacy work to guarantee impact and secure long-term policy focus.

  • Smart focus on digital rights

    Beware the risks and limitations of content moderation and content removal.

  • Sustainability and credibility through funding

    Devise long-term funding to ensure the independence of teacher-training, media literacy teaching and journalism.

  • Demand transparency

    Allow citizens to make informed choices regarding AI and preference-based algorithms. As a safeguard against influence buying, push for transparency of funding by platforms.

A look at some of the places we’re locally engaged:

  • "The research published today by our hosts, the lie detectors, confirms that a major tool to fight disinformation is education. I am convinced that in the long term we will not find a better way of empowering people than by increasing the level of digital literacy."

    Vera Jourova
    Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency

  • "That was really great. These sort of sessions are far too few and far between in our school schedule."

    15-year-old student
    Berlin, Germany

  • "Lie Detectors is a powerful answer to disinformation."

    Mariya Gabriel
    Former European Commissioner for Education and Youth

Formal advisory roles and recognition​

  • ​2025 Expert Group updating Digital Literacy Guidelines; also member of its steering committee

  • Steering Committee on Structural Indicators of Code of Practice (2022)

  • ​Consortium partner, 2024-2026 EDMO BELUX 2.0; Advisory board member, 2022-2025 EDMO BELUX 1.0 Hub (EDMO BELUX); VOICES Festival of Journalism and Media Literacy

  • Expert Advisory Group - Evaluation of the Guardian Foundation NewsWise programme

  • Teacher-training: Supportive Partner, eTwinning

We work both independently and in consortia to drive our mission, including with the follwing partners

Let’s make an impact together