Democracy
Carole Cadwalladr
Award date
September 2021
Amount
$100,000
Organization
The Citizens
Purpose
To combat disinformation through campaigns and investigations that hold political leaders, Big Tech executives, and superspreaders to account.
The Citizens was founded in 2020 by Pulitzer-nominated journalist Carole Cadwalladr in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal. It is a nonprofit journalism organisation with a focus on democracy, data rights and disinformation. It fights to hold political leaders, Big Tech executives, and disinformation superspreaders to account because a toxic information space undermines democratic rights and freedoms.
The Citizens is not just a collection of researchers, journalists, and activists. They are experimenters, change-makers, and storytellers, committed to curbing the unchecked power of corporations, investigating foreign interference in democracies, and exposing the bad actors waging ‘culture wars’ to further their own aims.
The Citizens produces original investigative journalism, takes legal actions against powerful institutions, creates content that demystifies how disinformation works and thrives, and gains access behind closed doors for intimate conversations with the leading voices in these fields.
Experimental by design, The Citizens is constantly looking to create new projects that mobilise global support for its campaigns and turn the pressure up on our governments. Without a doubt, the twenty-first century is operating against a global backdrop of huge social, economic and political disruption fueled by rapid advances in digital technology.