In the age of techno-globalization, information acts as the lifeblood, possessing the ability to connect people, promote understanding, empower individuals, and contribute to the creation of a more interconnected and harmonious society. It serves as a tool for making informed choices, thus empowering people. While information is acknowledged as the oxygen of the modern age and a key to empowerment, its effectiveness in addressing new challenges and emerging crises heavily relies on well-functioning information ecosystems. However, in the last few decades, the evolving landscape of the information ecosystem has changed rapidly. Drivers of change are multifaceted, multilayered, and multidimensional. Communities must be adaptive to these collective forces of change. History attests that for the last few decades, these forces were strengthened and made our society quite vulnerable and defenseless.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought attention to the vulnerabilities and insufficiencies of worldwide information ecosystems (leading to issues such as the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and infodemic), highlighting the importance of information resilience for individuals, organizations, and societies at large. 

Resilience means being able to handle and bounce back from challenges, both from outside and inside, to ensure survival and steady changes for the future (UNDP, 2011). The word 'Resilience' was first coined by C.S. Holling in 1973 to describe ecological concepts. Since then, it has been redefined in various ways, considering practical, metaphorical, or normative aspects. When we talk about a resilient community, it means the community can deal with challenges from social, economic, and environmental changes. These challenges might be anthropogenic or natural, and their reasons could be from within the community or from outside. Resilience is key to any crisis, be it individual or collective. We witnessed challenges and crises like the dengue outbreak, COVID-19 pandemic, earthquakes in Nepal & Japan, tsunamis, ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the Palestine-Israel war, Rohingya refugee crisis, to recent Balasore train accident, disturbance in the North East, landslides in Himachal Pradesh, air pollution in Delhi, devastating super Cyclones like Amphan in West Bengal, and floods in Kerala to name a few. In third-world countries, this challenge is further complicated by the influence of neoliberalism, the intricate nature of communication systems and sub-systems, and the constantly evolving information ecosystem.

The community's ability to handle and respond to situations is called adaptive capacity. Adaptive governance, a part of this capacity, refers to the system's ability to organize itself. This is encouraged by sharing knowledge and experiences through a network of stakeholders, leading to a common understanding and shared policies. To build up a resilient community, it is important to have evidence-based, well-researched, sustainable, trusted, and assured information across disciplines, removing our narrowed perspectives on disciplinary outlook.

In light of this, we propose organizing an international event to bring together a diverse group of experts across multiple disciplines, including social science researchers, academicians, policymakers, and NGOs. The aim is to facilitate meaningful dialogues and develop effective strategies that enhance the capacity of information ecosystems to withstand and overcome future crises while maximizing societal benefits even during non-crisis periods. The conference will unravel the layers of this ecosystem, including individuals, technologies, and institutions engaged in information creation in multiple formats, ubiquity, accumulation, and dissemination. The primary focus is to promote a sustainable information ecosystem that can withstand vulnerabilities, crises, and stresses fostering an information-resilient society.