In The Loop September 2025
9 minutes read | First published: September 23, 2025
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🚀 The RePlaybook: launching the first-of-its-kind field guide to the Climate and Information Crisis
We are facing a climate and information crisis that fuels confusion and division, putting climate action at risk. The urgent question is: what can be done?
“The RePlaybook: A Field Guide to the Climate and Information Crisis” shifts the focus from analysis to action. Featuring contributions from 30 journalists, researchers, technologists, climate communicators, creatives, and NGOs, it creates a first-of-its-kind overview of how to respond. It covers:
- 🔍 Decoding Information Disorder: How to use investigation to understand the who, what, why, and how of climate discourse. Contributions explore topics such as the application of AI to analyze climate discourse and the use of open-source intelligence to trace misinformation supply chains.
- 💪 Challenging Tech Paradigms: What to do when the digital platforms we depend on make things worse?. Ten contributors share provocations and insights, from evaluating the impact of generative AI on climate information, to navigating TikTok during extreme weather events, to setting up independent infrastructures and choosing alternative tools.
- 💡Counter Divided Discourse: How to experiment with different tactics for breaking through the noise and navigating a contested environment, from activating influencers to amplify climate messaging, to managing online harassment against climate advocates, to ‘goodnews’ journalism techniques that can bring hope to audiences.
With contributions from leading organisations and individuals, including Bellingcat, Climate Action Against Disinformation- CAAD, Global Optimism, Influence Map, Media Matters, and the Solutions Journalism Network, the guide reflects a wide range of expertise, along with a foreword by UN Special Rapporteur on Climate and Human Rights, Elisa Morgera.
Edited by Stephanie Hankey, co-founder of Tactical Tech. The project is supported by the Swedish Postcode Lottery Foundation.
"I warmly welcome The RePlaybook and its effective, creative, and hopeful ways to tackle the climate and information crisis. I celebrate the research, innovations, skills, tools, alliances, and mindsets that are offered here," Elisa Morgera, UN Special Rapporteur on climate change.
The RePlaybook, A Field Guide to the Climate and Information Crisis Cover.
Sample of The RePlaybook, A Field Guide to the Climate and Information Crisis.
The RePlaybook: A Field Guide to the Climate and Information Crisis, touring around the world 💡
Following its launch during Climate Week NYC in an event organised by Project Dandelion and the Rockefeller Foundation, Tactical Tech will be touring from Australia to Belgium, from Austria to Slovenia, to present The Replaybook. This includes a series of events, conferences, and masterclasses aimed at NGOs, journalists, and decision-makers. Interested in learning more? Contact us at partnership@tacticaltech.org
[🌱 In-person conference] #Disinfo2025: The Usual Suspects - Climate Edition. October 15, 2025. Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Tactical Tech’s Stephanie Hankey will share insights into the Replaybook and join Audrey Gueudet, Lindsey Gulden, and Henry Peck for a powerful conversation on how digital influence shapes public understanding of the climate crisis. This panel examines disinformation narratives, their weaponization, and strategies for challenging them. Learn more.
[🌍 In-person event] Down To Earth: Countering climate misinformation and inequality in the digital age. September 26, 2025. Vienna, Austria.
Do you want to know how digital technologies and AI weaponize climate misinformation and deepen inequality? Tactical Tech’s Marek Tuszynski will share insights into The Replaybook with a focus on AI. Session with Camille Belmin (IIASA), Lucas Chancel (World Inequality Lab), Thomas Lohninger (epicenter.works). Learn more.
[🛠️ In-person workshop] The Tools We Need Are Not the Tools We Want. September 27, 2025. Vienna, Austria.
Tactical Tech’s Marek Tuszynski will lead a workshop exploring how today’s cloud-based, frictionless platforms turn users into databases for monetisation through profiling, tracking, and manipulation, and how AI supercharges this cycle. Participants will discuss practical alternatives and how to choose digital tools that cause less harm to individuals, communities, and the planet. Learn more.
Open calls 📣
Join Tactical Tech's team in Berlin! Apply to become our new Communications & Fundraising Coordinator (Marketing & PR Focus). Deadline: October 8, 2025
Tactical Tech is seeking an engaging storyteller with creativity and a passion for communications, marketing, and business development. The Communications and Fundraising Coordinator will work with the entire team to help us realise our full potential. This includes developing and implementing communication strategies, reaching diverse global audiences online and in person, engaging high-impact partners with our products and services, supporting funding applications, and leading storytelling efforts that capture the impact of our work. Learn more about the requirements and the application process here.
Youth and Tech ⭐
🌱 Mentoring Young Activists-to-Be: Join MYCELIA!
Do you feel the world doesn’t make sense and want to take action, but don’t know where to start? You’re not alone. The MYCELIA mentorship programme (part of the Critical ChangeLab project) connects young people across Europe with experienced activists who can guide, support, and inspire you in your journey toward making change. Through a series of online mentoring sessions, you’ll learn from mentors who’ve faced the same doubts, exchange ideas with peers, and build the skills and networks needed to shape a more democratic and sustainable future. Apply by 30 September 2025 to join the next round of MYCELIA! Find out how to join here.
🎓 New MOOC for educators on Youth, Democracy & Technology – Participatory Approaches for Critical Consciousness
Are you an educator, activist, or youth leader who is interested in learning about how to apply participatory and playful methodologies in your context? This 7-module online course explores how young people engage with democracy in everyday life and in the digital age. It offers tools to reflect on digital rights, eco-social justice, and participatory approaches, while highlighting Critical Change Labs as case studies of youth empowerment. Certificates are available. Register here.
AI & Us 💻
[📛 In-person conference] News Impact Summit: Elevating Journalism with AI. October 9, 2025. Warsaw.
How is AI reshaping newsroom standards? Tactical Tech’s Ana Maria Salinas joins Dariusz Jemielniak, Branislava Lovre, and Bernd Oswald for the panel “The Ethics of AI: How Newsrooms Are Adjusting.” Together, they’ll unpack practical approaches to fairness, transparency, and editorial independence in the age of AI. Hosted by the European Journalism Centre. Learn more.
🖼️ AI & US: Get our new portable exhibition on AI now
AI & Us answers everything you wanted to know about AI, but were afraid to ask. It demystifies AI, sparks critical reflection on its role in our lives and work, and provokes dialogue about its impact on society. This modular set, which features posters, interactive activities, and the Data Detox Spa: AI Edition, explores algorithms, chatbots, and LLMs, AI’s environmental cost, the hidden labor behind it, scams and influence, stereotype amplification, bias, and well-being. Want to host your own AI & Us Pop-Up Exhibition? Learn more here or contact us at partnership@tacticaltech.org.
🚨 Last days to apply: "To AI or Not to AI – The Uses of AI in Digital Investigations", the hands-on training in Berlin you can't miss!
Join us this fall in Berlin for To AI or Not to AI, a three-day hands-on training designed to help journalists, researchers, advocates, and digital rights defenders navigate the AI-driven landscape of public-interest investigations. You’ll gain practical skills and frameworks to decide when, why, and how to use AI tools—while learning strategies to avoid over-reliance and address digital safety risks. From improving research and sourcing to enhancing storytelling, content creation, and fact-checking workflows, this event will equip you with the critical tools you need for today’s challenges. Learn more and apply here. Final deadline: September 26, 2025
TACTICAL TECH: TRAINING AND ADVANCING THE SKILLS OF COMMUNITIES WORLDWIDE 🧠
Tactical Tech's team led conversations, hosted workshops and sessions, and participated in various events to advance knowledge and build the capacities of individuals and communities to address technology-related challenges. Here’s a recap of last month’s events:
➡️ Tactical Tech at Ars Electronica Festival 2025! In the frame of the Critical Change Lab project, Tactical Tech’s Ana Maria Salinas joined the Ars Electronica Festival to participate in and facilitate conversations about how to develop and implement creative media literacy initiatives to spark critical conversation about AI, its limitations, potentialities, and impacts, especially for young people. Learn more about the festival, the panel “Unlearning the Algorithm: Education for Critical AI Literacy,” and the hands-on workshop on Critical Change Labs, a participatory methodology for teaching democratic engagement and critical AI literacy here.
AI now plays a powerful role in shaping how young people access information, form opinions, and engage with the world. Without critical intervention, unexamined algorithms and biased datasets risk narrowing their perspectives and silencing diverse voices. @POSCTCITY Photo showing: Mairéad Hurley, Amil Khan, Ana Maria Salinas Bojaca, Christoph Helm. Photo: MD
Explore practical tools and real-world strategies for designing democratic learning spaces. This workshop helps educators foster youth voice, civic imagination, and critical engagement—building partnerships across schools, culture, research, and industry. @POSTCITY. Photo showing: Ana Maria Salinas Bojaca. Photo: vog.photo
➡️ Tactical Tech at HOTHOUSE: A Renegade Lab for Democracy Against Technocapitalist Authoritarianism! Between September 12 and October 4, Tactical Tech’s Marek Tuszynski took part in the fifth season of HOTHOUSE in Vienna, where the 'AI & Us' pop-up exhibition and the "To AI or not to AI" workshop were hosted.
➡️ On September 19, Tactical Tech’s Co-Founder Marek Tuszynski spoke at the IMA Institute for Media Archaeology’s conference Prolog: Reenacting Dartmouth in St. Pölten with the lecture “Information Sickness,” exploring how emerging technologies fuel hyper-profiling, emotional targeting, synthetic trust, and the erosion of democratic foundations. More info.