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United Nations partners with Purpose to use influencers in ‘Verified’ campaign against COVID misinformation
Summary
At a live SDG Media Zone conversation, UN communications chief Melissa Fleming and Purpose founder Jeremy Hymans described how the UN and Purpose created the Verified alliance during the COVID-19 pandemic to use unbranded influencer content and volunteer networks to counter misinformation; they said the model is now being adapted for climate communications.
Melissa Fleming, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, and Jeremy Hymans, founder and chairman of Purpose, described how a rapid UN–Purpose partnership launched an initiative called Verified in spring 2020 to counter COVID-19 misinformation.
Fleming said the Verified effort combined "all of the institutional credibility, the science and the global reach of the UN" with Purpose’s ability to craft unbranded, audience-specific content. "We formed this ... wonderful and very novel alliance," Jeremy Hymans said, adding that the campaign prioritized reaching audiences that mainstream outlets did not reach.
The Nut Graf: The Verified model shifted away from traditional, branded UN messaging toward distributed, influencer-driven content. Fleming and Hymans said the approach recruited volunteers, trained scientists and…
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