ICCO Launches Industry-First Mis/Disinformation Training & Certification Program to Combat Global Information Crisis

London/Mumbai, 16 September 2026 – The International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) has announced the launch of its flagship Mis/Disinformation Training & Certification Program, a comprehensive initiative designed to equip communications professionals with the critical skills needed to identify, counter, and prevent misinformation and disinformation in an increasingly volatile and fragmented information ecosystem. The program, which runs from October 15 to December 15, 2026, is an entirely online, globally accessible course that will be limited to up to 100 trainees to ensure a high-quality, immersive learning experience. The announcement arrives at a moment of profound global concern: the World Economic Forum’s 2024, 2025, and 2026 Global Risk Reports have consistently and prominently identified misinformation and disinformation as leading short-term risks to global stability, ranking them above armed conflict, economic downturn, and even extreme weather events in terms of immediate threat probability. This sustained year-on-year recognition underscores what many communications professionals have long warned: that the deliberate distortion of public information now poses an existential challenge not only to individual organisations and brands, but to the very fabric of democratic societies, public health systems, electoral integrity, and social cohesion. By launching this certification program, ICCO is positioning the public relations and communications industry as a direct frontline defense against this crisis, moving the profession away from purely reactive crisis management toward a proactive, strategically vital role in preserving trust and truth in the public sphere. The program builds directly on ICCO’s six-year institutional commitment to combating false information, including its pro-bono support to the European Medicines Agency in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 infodemic—a period in which false claims about vaccines and treatments were actively costing lives across every continent—as well as the development of industry-leading resources such as the “Tackling Mis/Disinformation: A Global Digital Handbook for Communicators” published in 2025. The timing of the launch is deliberate, reflecting the recognition that today’s communications professionals operate in an unprecedented landscape where the scale, speed, and sophistication of disinformation campaigns have outpaced traditional countermeasures.

The current information environment presents challenges that are qualitatively different from anything previously encountered, and the program has been carefully structured to address these threats at their root. One of the defining features of today’s information landscape is algorithmic fragmentation: social media platforms and search engines now curate content based on increasingly opaque personalisation algorithms, effectively dividing the information society into isolated digital ecosystems in which users may be entirely unaware of the dominant narratives circulating in other communities. This fragmentation has produced what researchers call “epistemic bubbles” and “echo chambers”—closed feedback loops in which false narratives become self-reinforcing and resistant to correction from outside sources. At the same time, artificial intelligence has emerged as a powerful and deeply ambiguous force: on the one hand, AI systems are being used to generate highly realistic deepfakes, synthetic audio, fabricated images, and automated disinformation campaigns at industrial scale, making it cheaper than ever for malicious actors to create compelling but wholly false content; on the other hand, AI-driven tools also offer the most promising mechanisms for detecting manipulation, tracking viral narratives, and debunking false claims in real time. Communications professionals, the program’s architects argue, must therefore understand both sides of the AI coin—the threats it poses and the opportunities it presents—to effectively safeguard their organisations. Adding urgency to these concerns is the recent decision by major social media platforms to terminate their agreements with third-party fact-checking entities in select regions around the world. This decision, which has been met with alarm across the international communications community, was the subject of a prominent ICCO survey in which an overwhelming 82% of communicators expressed strong opposition to the move, highlighting a robust industry-wide consensus that credible, independent fact-checking partnerships—alongside pre-bunking strategies, meticulous preparation, and thoughtful organisational design—remain absolutely essential pillars of any serious defense against false information. The program curriculum directly responds to this developing situation, moving beyond the assumption that social platforms can or will regulate content on behalf of users and instead empowering communications professionals with the internal capabilities and agency required to monitor, assess, and respond to disinformation threats autonomously.

The program’s curriculum, delivered over a two-month period from October 15 to December 15, 2026, consists of six core instructional modules followed by a final test and certification examination. The first module, “Disinformation 101,” establishes the foundational knowledge landscape by exploring precise definitions of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation; differentiating between them; and introducing the key characteristics of each, including how they propagate through networks and what counter-strategies have proven most effective across different contexts and geographies. The second module, “The Basics of Fact-Checking and Source Verification,” moves into the practical realm, equipping participants with hands-on tools and methodologies for verifying the authenticity of audiovisual content, reverse-image searching, geolocation techniques, metadata analysis, and triangulation of sources—skills that have become indispensable in an era when synthetic media can be generated faster than it can be debunked. The third module, “Analysing the Spread of (Dis)information,” shifts to the network level, teaching participants to track and map the dissemination dynamics of false narratives across social platforms, messaging apps, and fringe forums, and to translate those analytical insights directly into actionable crisis response strategies that can interrupt amplification at critical stages in the lifecycle of a disinformation wave. The fourth module, “Media Literacy and Crisis Preparation,” addresses the broader societal vulnerabilities that make audiences susceptible to false information—including declining institutional trust, polarisation, and low digital literacy—and demonstrates how communications departments can incorporate ecosystem vulnerability assessments and mitigation tactics into their organisational crisis playbooks before an incident occurs. The fifth module, “Reporting, Correcting, and Responding,” provides a structured framework for strategic escalation and response, covering when and how to issue corrections, how to engage with journalists and fact-checkers during a disinformation incident, how to handle responses across different platforms without amplifying false narratives, and how to coordinate with legal, regulatory, and executive stakeholders. The sixth and final instructional module, “Generative AI, Search, and New Challenges,” confronts the most cutting-edge frontier of the field, examining how advances in large language models, generative adversarial networks, and AI-enabled search engines are reshaping the disinformation landscape, and the concrete organisational mitigation strategies—including AI governance frameworks, synthetic media detection systems, and content provenance standards—that forward-looking organisations are now adopting. Following these six modules, participants complete a final test and certification examination, which awards an industry-recognised credential upon successful completion, representing a new benchmark of professional competence and responsibility in the fight against information disorder.

The program’s target audience is notably broad and intentional, encompassing both agency and in-house Communications and PR advisors, Corporate and Public Affairs Consultants, Brand Managers, Social Media professionals, and Journalists—a rare and deliberate “tri-audience” approach that creates valuable cross-sectoral networking opportunities and enables the sharing of diverse perspectives, challenges, and best practices throughout the learning experience. This multidisciplinary cohort design is itself an innovative feature of the program. In the complex information ecosystem, the fight against disinformation cannot be siloed; a journalist debunking a viral fake story, a brand manager responding to a manipulated image that implicates their company, a social media professional monitoring their organisation’s channels for coordinated inauthentic behaviour, and a PR consultant advising a client on dealing with a smear campaign all operate on the same front line and increasingly need to collaborate effectively. By bringing these professions together into a single cohort of no more than 100 participants, ICCO aims to break down the traditional walls between these disciplines and foster the kind of collaborative, cross-functional problem-solving that real-world disinformation crises demand. The small cohort size is also carefully calibrated: it ensures facilitators can provide personalised attention, enables meaningful discussion and interaction in group exercises, and creates an alumni network of certified professionals who have shared an intensive, transformative learning experience and who can serve as a distributed network of expertise long after the program ends. The global reach of the program, delivered entirely online with the capacity to accommodate participants across multiple time zones, reflects ICCO’s international remit as the global voice of the communications, public relations, and public affairs industries, and its recognition that disinformation is fundamentally a borderless phenomenon that requires an internationally coordinated, professionally trained response.

Announcing the program, Massimo Moriconi, ICCO President, delivered a powerful statement on the momentous responsibility facing the profession. “As misinformation and disinformation become increasingly sophisticated and consequential, communications professionals must evolve from reactive crisis managers to strategic defenders of truth, trust and business,” Moriconi said. “This certification program reflects our commitment to equipping the communications industry with the knowledge, tools, and community needed to meet this defining challenge of our time, particularly as AI continues to reshape both the creation and detection of false information.” Moriconi’s framing of communications professionals as “strategic defenders of truth” marks a significant evolution in the self-conception of the public relations industry, which historically has often been associated with spin, persuasion, and the management of favourable narratives. The ICCO leadership is explicitly redefining the profession’s role, positioning it not merely as a guardian of its clients’ reputational and commercial interests—although those remain central—but also as a critical societal institution in its own right, one that protects the integrity of the informational environment on which all legitimate business and democratic activity depends. The sentiment was echoed and amplified by Giovanni Zagni, Director of Pagella Politica/Facta, the internationally respected Italian fact-checking organisation that is partnering with ICCO to deliver the program’s fact-checking modules and overall expertise. “We are very proud to be partnering with ICCO in this ground-breaking certification program,” Zagni stated. “We want to bridge the gap between fact-checking practitioners and the communications industry, as well as the business community at large. Mis- and disinformation needs to be tackled with a collective effort, and this program will give all the practical and intellectual tools in order to do so.” The partnership with Pagella Politica/Facta is itself a significant endorsement of the program’s credibility; fact-checking organisations occupy a unique and trusted position in the information ecosystem, and their involvement ensures that the practical verification and debunking techniques taught in the program are drawn directly from the real-world frontline operations of professional fact-checkers rather than merely recycled academic theoretical frameworks.

The launch of this certification program is the latest and arguably most significant initiative in an institutional agenda that ICCO has been developing since 2021, when the organisation made the formal decision to dedicate itself with sustained focus to the fight against misinformation and disinformation. That year, ICCO provided pro-bono support to the European Medicines Agency during the COVID-19 infodemic, assisting the agency in countering the flood of false health information that was undermining vaccination campaigns and public health measures across Europe—an experience that exposed ICCO member firms to both the scale of the problem and the practical challenges of correcting pandemic-era disinformation. Since then, ICCO has built a robust portfolio of partnerships and initiatives, collaborating with an impressive array of international organisations including the Council of Europe, The Trust Project, EACD (European Association of Communication Directors), GWPR (Global Women in PR), AMEC (the international association for the measurement and evaluation of communication), and EUPRERA (European Public Relations Education and Research Association). Among its notable initiatives are the Media Information and Education Pledge of 2023, through which ICCO and its partners committed to advancing media literacy and public understanding of how information is produced and disseminated; and the Future PR Student Competition of 2024-2025, which engaged the next generation of communications professionals with the ethical and practical challenges of disinformation. The new Training & Certification Program, however, represents a qualitative leap: it standardises and codifies the body of knowledge that has accumulated through these years of research, partnership, and practical experience into a rigorous, exam-based certification that establishes a clear professional standard for competency in disinformation response. As such, the program serves not only to build individual capacity but also to institutionalise the fight against disinformation as a core, recognised competency within the communications profession itself. In a world where the next major disinformation crisis—whether targeting a private corporation, a political institution, or a global public health campaign—is likely to be more sophisticated and more consequential than anything yet seen, the 100 certified professionals emerging from this program will be at the forefront of the defence, armed with the verified, practical, and evidence-based skills to protect not just the organisations that employ them, but the broader informational environment upon which public trust depends. This is the standard that ICCO is setting, and it is a standard to which the entire global communications industry will increasingly be expected to aspire.