Lynn Democracy
to support Local Authorities mitigate harms from disinformation
Local Authorities across England, Wales, and Scotland recognise the growing threat to community cohesion and resilience as a result of the sustained and increasing proliferation of disinformation and conspiracy thinking.
Setting the scene
Disinformation and organised influence campaigns are undermining democratic processes, fuelling hate, and splintering communities across the UK.
There is growing concern that Russia is seeking to fuel social unrest in the UK and other western European states via convert digital campaigns aimed at exploiting ethnic and religious tensions.
As the UK increases its defence spending, and commits to long-term support for Ukraine, there is an opportunity to forensically assess how the public are perceiving these policies, the extent to which disinformation may be influencing belief systems, attitudes, and identities, and how it might contribute to harmful behaviours – now and in the future.
Our methodology
Lynn founded the UK’s first commercial anti-disinformation unit, The Misinformation Cell, in 2021. Since then, we’ve worked with governments and non-governmental entities (such as the World Economic Forum) to tackle the growing threats from misinformation, using best-in-class behavioural science principles to build resilience within organisations and communities.
Our approach is proprietary and focuses on mitigating the real-world impacts from misinformation – and is widely considered as gold standard.
Perception Studies: Our Perception Studies assess how a specific policy is perceived by the public, identifying perceptual gaps, including behavioural segmentation, cognitive and emotional attributes people associate with the policy, and the main drivers and barriers in policy acceptability.
Belief Studies: Our Belief Studies assess information threats and adversarial narratives (e.g. immigration, far-right extremism, Islamophobia etc.), specifically through the lens of disinformation and conspiracy thinking. How are influence campaigns (state, non-state) shaping key beliefs, identities, and worldviews amongst communities in the UK? And what does this mean in terms of real-world behaviours? We analyse belief prevalence (what do people believe?), embeddedness (how important are these beliefs to them?), to assess and predict behaviours (what behaviours are they currently engaging in, or might engage in the future, to defend these beliefs?) and potential wider impact (cohesion, policy acceptance, sources of information, trust, and tolerance).
We correlate this information to paint the most useful picture – e.g. how do far-right beliefs contribute to, or interact with, antisemitic or Islamophobic beliefs?
Threat analysis
Our research helps organisations better understand how information threats are targeting populations, how these narratives are being seen, perceived and understood, and potential risks to the wider community and national security.
Lynn’s Belief Studies can help answer the questions…
- How widespread are conspiracy beliefs?
- Which beliefs are driving harmful real-world behaviours?
- Are people willing to engage in harmful behaviours as a result of their beliefs? If so, what are they likely to do?
- Based on the criteria for extreme beliefs, what are the critical far-right, Islamophobic etc. narratives circulating within communities?
- Correlation analysis to assess:
- how extreme beliefs interact with each other
- the typical persona to engage in these beliefs
- potential behaviours these beliefs are leading to – now, and in the future (compared to the general population)
Lynn services
An overview of the services outlined in this deck. Lynn are agile and will design bespoke solutions that can be rapidly applied to national security and community cohesion challenges:
Perception Studies
Include (i) an initial scoping and familiarisation phase, which involves analysing relevant evidence and contextual information. (ii) Mixed-methods survey instrument design and development, underpinned by behavioural science, with co-production with relevant stakeholders. (iii) Primary research, including data collection from representative samples, data analysis, and interpretation. (iv) A reporting phase, including knowledge sharing and actionable recommendations that can be integrated within relevant workstreams.
Belief Studies
Include (i) an initial scoping and familiarisation phase, analysing relevant evidence and contextual information. (ii) Mixed-methods survey instrument design and development, with co-production with relevant stakeholders. (iii) Primary research with representative samples to assess the prevalence and embeddedness of problematic beliefs and attitudes, and how these correlate with behaviour. (iv) A response strategy and associated implementation plan, helping to manage and mitigate identified threats.
Experimental research
Experimental campaign testing includes (i) creative development of campaign materials (i.e. assets, messaging, CTAs - if relevant). (ii) ‘Field’ and ‘Lab’ trials, using social media infrastructure and our online panel, including the design and development of the experimental survey instrument, primary research, data analysis, and interpretation. (iii) insight reporting, and associated knowledge sharing. Experimental narrative development includes (i) An initial scoping and co-production phase with relevant stakeholders. (ii) Behavioural frame development and testing, including the design and development of an experimental survey instrument, primary research, data analysis, and interpretation. (iii) insight reporting.
To find out more, email contact@lynn.global
