• Social Media Users More Likely to Believe False COVID-19 Information

    People who get their news from social media are more likely to have misperceptions about COVID-19. Those that consume more traditional news media have fewer misperceptions and are more likely to follow public health recommendations like social distancing.

  • MI5 Did Nothing to Stop Russia’s “Nihilistic” Campaign to Undermine, Corrupt British Democracy

    On Tuesday, the U.K. government released a long-awaited report by the British Parliament’s Intelligence Committee on Russian meddling in British politics. The report says that Russia has mounted a prolonged, sophisticated campaign to undermine Britain’s democracy and corrupt British politics. The committee’s account characterized Russia as a reckless country bent on recapturing its status as a “great power,” primarily by destabilizing those in the West. “The security threat posed by Russia is difficult for the West to manage as, in our view and that of many others, it appears fundamentally nihilistic,” the authors said. The report, in many ways, is harder on British officials than the Russians. It is unsparing in the answer it gives to the question who is protecting British democracy: “No one is,” the report warns.

  • Disinformation Campaigns Are Murky Blends of Truth, Lies, and Sincere Beliefs – Lessons from the Pandemic

    The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned an infodemic, a vast and complicated mix of information, misinformation and disinformation. The notion of disinformation often brings to mind easy-to-spot propaganda peddled by totalitarian states, but the reality is much more complex. Though disinformation does serve an agenda, it is often camouflaged in facts and advanced by innocent and often well-meaning individuals. This mix of information types makes it difficult for people, including those who build and run online platforms, to distinguish an organic rumor from an organized disinformation campaign.

  • A Growing Online Black Market

    As instances of online identity theft continue to rise over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, new research helps shed light on the shady world of cybercriminals and how it operates. “The cybercrime marketplace, like most e-commerce, has continued to expand and carding forums are the most widespread formats in the West for exchanging illicit goods,” said a researcher.

  • Tracking Misinformation Campaigns in Real-Time is Possible: Study

    A research team has developed a technique for tracking online foreign misinformation campaigns in real time, which could help mitigate outside interference in the 2020 American election. The researchers developed a method for using machine learning to identify malicious Internet accounts, or trolls, based on their past behavior. The model investigated past misinformation campaigns from China, Russia, and Venezuela that were waged against the United States before and after the 2016 election.

  • People “Fly to Quality” News When Faced with Uncertainty

    When information becomes a matter of life or death or is key to navigating economic uncertainty, as it has during the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears people turn to tried and true sources of information rather than iffy sites that have become increasingly part of the social media news diet in recent years.

  • Farrakhan Remains Most Popular Anti-Semite in America

    Anti-Semitism has stained the speeches and statements of Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Louis Farrakhan for decades. This past 4 July was no different, as Farrakhan delivered an address replete with anti-Semitic lies and stereotypes, and calls for his listeners to speak out against Jews. Farrakhan’s speech has been viewed over 1.2 million times (as of 15 July) on numerous YouTube channels.

  • U.K. to Examine Effectiveness of Existing Legislation in Dealing with Hateful Extremism

    As is the case in other countries, the U.K. is facing a sharp rise in activity extremist groups. The U.K. Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) has launched a legal review to examine the effectiveness of existing U.K. legislation in dealing with hateful extremism. The CCE’s recommendations will be submitted to the Home Secretary.

  • The Secret Lab Conspiracy: A Converging Narrative

    Some observers have recently argued about a convergence of narratives between pro-Kremlin and Chinese disinformation networks. One example of the convergence of false Russian and Chinese narrative, both aiming to undermine relations among Western and pro-Western countries, is the  “clandestine U.S. biolabs” conspiracy theory.

  • The High Cost of Conspiracy Theories

    Conspiracy theories have been rampant on the Internet since the Corona crisis began. One of the most curious conspiracy theories involves Bill Gates: He wants to implant microchips into people with the help of vaccinations and thus control humanity, according to many online forums. Gustav Theile writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [in German] that surveys repeatedly show that these conspiracies are not a niche phenomenon. According to a Yougov survey, 44 percent of Republicans in the United States believe in the Gates microchip conspiracy. One in two Britons, according to a study by Oxford University, tends towards conspiracy theories. In Germany, the belief in the Gates conspiracy seems to have more followers than the fear that the new 5G mobile communications standard is the cause of the coronavirus epidemic. Web searches for both conspiracy theories shot up in April and May, but overall, Googling for 5G was only about half as often as for Bill Gates. Why conspiracies, which are supposed to be top secret, should be unmasked by simply Googling is, of course, not clear.

  • Hateful Extremists Have Been Exploiting the Current Pandemic

    The U.K. Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) has published a report Thursday, looking at the way in which extremists have sought to exploit the current pandemic. The CCE say that the government needs to ensure that their response to dealing with COVID-19 and future crises takes into account the significant threat of hateful extremism and the dangerous narratives spread by conspiracy theories.

  • Democracy under Threat from “Pandemic of Misinformation” Online: Lords Committee

    The U.K. government should act immediately to deal with a “pandemic of misinformation” that poses an existential threat to our democracy and way of life. The stark warning comes in a report published Monday by the House of Lords’ Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies.

  • U.S. Facing Growing Terrorism Problem, with White Supremacists the “Most Significant Threat”: Report

    A new report by terrorism experts at the conservative-leaning CSIS thinktank says that the United States faces a growing terrorism problem which will likely worsen over the next year. The most significant threat likely comes from white supremacists, though anarchists and religious extremists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda could present a potential threat as well. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between 1 January and 8 May 2020. Over the rest of 2020, the terrorist threat in the United States will likely rise based on several factors, including the November 2020 presidential election.

  • Chinese, Russian COVID-19 Disinformation More Influential than Domestic European News Sources

    Chinese, Russia, Turkish, and Iranian state-backed propaganda outlets disseminate COVID-19-related disinformation throughout Europe in French, German, and Spanish, and this professionally presented disinformation is generating greater engagement across Facebook and Twitter than prominent domestic news media such as Le Monde in France or El Pais in Spain. Russian outlets producing fake coronavirus content in French and German consistently emphasized weak democratic institutions and civil disorder in Europe.

  • COVID-19 Pandemic Has Unleashed Wave of Anti-Semitism

    The coronavirus epidemic has been accompanied by what the WHO described as “infodemic” – an avalanche of conspiracy theories and disinformation which has spread on social networks. As is often the case, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are prominent in this infodemic, and a new report offers an analysis of the phenomenon.