The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public is accepting applications for the CIP Community Fellowship program’s 2025-26 cohort through June 30.
Launched in 2023, the program fosters and grows a network of practitioners with the goal of building collaboration, sharing ideas, creating new initiatives, and nurturing a more interconnected community that is passionate about the CIP’s mission to resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society, and strengthen democratic discourse. Through experiential learning and practical application, the program aims to provide practitioners in wide-ranging fields, such as journalism, education, technology, librarianship, government, community organizations and law, with opportunities to explore the intersection between research and professional experience.
The CIP Community Fellowship is designed as an opportunity for participating Fellows to:
- Be part of a vibrant, multidisciplinary research community to explore new ideas.
- Gain knowledge about the current landscape of mis/disinformation and various intervention practices and initiatives.
- Build connections and engage with CIP-affiliated researchers, staff, and students.
- Participate in center events and projects.
- Benefit from a CIP mentor.
- Showcase their projects through CIP events.
- Bring new perspectives, insights, and connections back into their organizations, networks and communities.
For the 2025-26 cohort, the CIP’s Community Fellowship is structured around two separate tracks:
- The Project Track will include professionals from a field impacted by misinformation (such as journalism, education, technology, librarianship, government, community organizations and law) who feel the fellowship would uniquely inspire or energize their work and who would contribute new insights and experiences to the fellowship cohort and broader CIP community. Fellowship cohort members in the Project Track will propose and lead a strategic and impactful project related to combating misinformation. This might include the development of new programs, curricula, technologies, or other activities designed to combat misinformation.
- The Educator Cohort Track is designed specifically for Washington-based educators – including those in K-12 schools, higher education, and libraries – who are committed to building misinformation resilience in their schools or communities through formal or informal learning. Participants will engage in both virtual and in-person learning experiences with our research team and a cohort of peers, while developing strategies and resources to strengthen media and information literacy. As part of their work, Fellowship cohort members in the Educator Cohort Track will host a MisinfoDay @ MyCommunity event and work toward a clearly defined goal for how they will sustain education efforts around misinformation in the school, library or community they serve.
For more information about eligibility for the 2025-26 cohort, application requirements, submission details and other information about the program, please see the CIP Community Fellowship webpage.
Projects that have emerged from work pursued by CIP Community Fellowship members in recent years include designing professional development to prepare public library staff to provide programs that address misinformation for patrons; adapting media literacy resources and learning activities in different education environments, including for use in a community college and within a state’s network of 4-H clubs in rural communities; exploring how antitrust enforcement may better achieve its goals by considering the impact of misinformation on digital markets; and studying the use of deepfake technology in media during the 2024 Indonesian elections.
In 2024, work fostered through the CIP Community Fellowship program led to the creation of an intergenerational learning event in Skagit County, Washington, where high school students taught local senior citizens some of the media literacy educational lessons and skills they’re learning in the classroom. Then, the local seniors shared life lessons and community knowledge with the high school students. The “Leveling Up Seniors” event, led by 2023-24 cohort member Linsey Kitchens, a teacher-librarian at Sedro-Woolley High School, has been featured in Teen Vogue, the Skagit Valley Herald and in a Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction video.
- Learn more about the CIP Community Fellowship program, including eligibility, qualifications, application requirements and key dates and timeline for the 2025-26 cohort.
PHOTO ABOVE: High school students from Sedro-Woolley, Washington demonstrate media literacy educational lessons during a June 2024 intergenerational learning event, “Leveling Up Seniors,” that was developed through the work of teacher-librarian Linsey Kitchens, a CIP Community Fellowship 2023-24 cohort member. (Photo by Michael Grass / Center for an Informed Public)
