Resilience and Vulnerability to Misinformation and Disinformation in Political Information Environments: A Comparative Review of Ten Indexes

Political information environments around the world are facing the twin challenges of misinformation and disinformation, which degrade the quality of public discourse, undermine political stability, and weaken social cohesion. It is therefore important to understand the conditions under which countries are at risk from misinformation and disinformation. In recent years, several indexes have been developed by scholars, think tanks, advocacy groups, and technology companies aimed at diagnosing and comparing these risk and protective conditions. Yet, systematic cross-index comparison remains limited.

This Synthesis Report (TP2026.1) addresses this gap by developing a typology of existing measures, providing a systematic comparative analysis of ten published indexes, and offering a fitness-for-purpose guide for researchers, policymakers, and index producers. Our analysis reveals three key insights:

1. The concepts of vulnerability and resilience provide a foundational framework for understanding how political misinformation and disinformation are amplified or mitigated and for comparing countries over time. However, because most indexes rely on structural, perceptual, or behavioral proxies rather than direct measures, their scores should therefore be read as comparative diagnostics rather than estimates of disinformation prevalence.
2. Several indexes offer valuable and complementary insights, but they diverge in their theoretical assumptions, methodologies, and the aspects of the political information environment they emphasize. Caution is therefore required to avoid overgeneralizing cross-national rankings, and triangulation across complementary measures is often advisable.
3. Although the ten indexes considered in this report were designed to address political misinformation and disinformation, their underlying logic can be applied to the broader task of measuring political information environments and information integrity.

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By evaluating the strengths, good practices, and shortcomings of these ten indexes, this report highlights the critical dimensions and measures that can guide a theoretically informed, methodologically robust, and globally sensitive next-generation index. It concludes with guidance for using index results responsibly.

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ISBN: 978-3-03983-017-6

DOI: 10.61452/MBPE3349

Citation: International Panel on the Information Environment [F. Esser, J.A. Solis, M. Chan,P. van Aelst, D. Madrid-Morales, T. Bosch, M. Botan, E. Humprecht, J. Labarre, R. M. Santini, A. Schulz, B. Seim, M. Wack, P.N. Howard, S. Valenzuela (eds.)], “Resilience and Vulnerability to Misinformation and Disinformation in Political Information Environments: A Comparative Review of Ten Indexes,” Zurich, Switzerland: IPIE, 2026. Technical Paper, TR2026.1, doi: 10.61452/MBPE3349.

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