• Experts: Russia Using Virus Crisis to Sow Discord in West

    Experts say that Kremlin’s disinformation specialists are behind a disinformation campaign in the Western media on coronavirus, intended to fuel panic and discord among allies, deepen the crisis, exacerbate its consequences, and hamper the ability of Western democracies to respond to it effectively. The European Union has accused Moscow of pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, using “contradictory, confusing and malicious reports” to make it harder for the bloc leaders to communicate its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Truth Decay in the Coronavirus Moment: Q&A with Jennifer Kavanagh

    The COVID-19 crisis “is the type of environment in which false and misleading information thrives and spreads quickly. People are vulnerable. People are afraid. People don’t know what to believe. Trust in basically every organization or position that we would turn to is pretty low. There’s higher trust in the medical community than in, say, media or government, but it’s still not all that high. The combination of low trust and high volume of information coming from people who are not experts—but purport to be experts—creates the perfect storm for the average person,” says Jennifer Kavanagh, author of Truth Decay.

  • The Catch to Putting Warning Labels on Fake News

    After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook began putting warning tags on news stories fact-checkers judged to be false. But there’s a catch: Tagging some stories as false makes readers more willing to believe other stories and share them with friends, even if those additional, untagged stories also turn out to be false.

  • Facebook, Twitter Remove Russia-Linked Fake Accounts Targeting Americans

    Social-media giants Facebook and Twitter say they have removed a number of Russia-linked fake accounts that targeted U.S. users from their operations in Ghana and Nigeria. Facebook on 12 March said the accounts it removed were in the “early stages” of building an audience on behalf of individuals in Russia, posting on topics such as black history, celebrity gossip, and fashion.

  • Extremists Use Coronavirus to Advance Racist, Conspiratorial Agendas

    As the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus surges globally, extremists continue to use the virus  to advance their bigotry and anti-Semitism, while also promoting conspiracy theories and even boogaloo (the white supremacist term for civil war). As usual, extremists are relying primarily on fringe social media platforms to disseminate their views, but as the virus spreads, it has gotten easier to find xenophobia, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories on mainstream social media platforms.

  • Chinese and Russian State-Owned Media on the Coronavirus: United Against the West?

    Beginning in late January, when news emerged of a “novel coronavirus” spreading through China, Beijing’s propaganda apparatus shifted into overdrive. The epidemic has also been heavily covered in externally directed Russian state-backed media outlets, offering an opportunity to compare and contrast the approaches of both countries’ propaganda apparatuses.

  • Better Math to Help Stop Spread of False Rumors about COVID-19

    Think of all the false rumors that went viral about COVID-19—it got so bad, the World Health Organization called it an “infodemic.” Whether it is in hoaxes or a viral conspiracy theory, information travels fast these days. Just how fast and far information moves depends on who shares it, and where, from discussions on social media to  conversations with fellow commuters on your way to work. So, how can our interactions and their infrastructures affect the spread of rumors and information? That’s a question that researchers are beginning to answer with complex math models of social contagion, the concept that social behavior and ideas spread like a pathogen.

  • U.S. Accuses Russia of Spreading Fear, Panic on Coronavirus

    The United States is accusing Russia of opening up its entire disinformation playbook to prey on growing fears about the spread of the coronavirus. Moscow’s effort, underway for weeks, according to officials, includes the use of state-run media outlets, fake news websites and “swarms” of fake online personas to churn out fabricated information in at least five languages. 

  • Random Toxicity? What’s Going on in @benjaminwittes’s Mentions

    Benjamin Wittes, the editor of Lawfare, had supported Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 nomination to the Supreme Court early on, said nice things about him, and defended him against allegations he thought were spurious. But though he publicly changed his position after Christine Blasey Ford came forward and testified, he writes that ever since, every twit of his, regardless of its topic, is responded to with hundreds or even thousands of angry twits, with practically identical wording, accusing him of having been a “Buddy of Kavanaugh.” Matters only got worse when he supported, albeit tepidly, the appointment of Bill Barr for Attorney General. Who is behind these thousands of similar twits?

  • Tool Identifies, Exposes Violent Extremists Online

    In an increasingly connected world, there are plenty of opportunities for extremists to communicate, recruit, spread propaganda, and incite violence. From videos being shared on Facebook and Twitter, to more niche instant-messaging services such as Telegram, to coded postings on Gab, 4 Chan, and 8chan — the number and reach of communications channels available to extremists has never been greater. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a non-partisan organization, has developed a platform – Contextus – which uses machine-learning to track and expose extremist discourse online.

  • Tools to Help Fight Disinformation Online

    Today’s information ecosystem brings access to seemingly infinite amounts of information instantaneously. It also contributes to the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation to millions of people. Researchers at RAND’s Truth Decay initiative worked to identify and characterize the universe of online tools targeted at online disinformation, focusing on those tools created by nonprofit or civil society organizations.

  • Digital Threats to Democracy

    A new study surveyed hundreds of technology experts about whether or not digital disruption will help or hurt democracy by 2030. Of the 979 responses, about 49 percent of these respondents said use of technology “will mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation in the next decade,” while 33 percent said the use of technology “will mostly strengthen core aspects of democracy.”

  • Spies, Election Meddling, And Disinformation: Past and Present

    Calder Walton writes that following Russia’s “sweeping and systematic” attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential election—which was intended to support Moscow’s favored candidate, Donald J. Trump, and undermine his opponent, Hillary Clinton—the media frequently labeled the operation “unprecedented.” “The social-media technologies that Russia deployed in its cyber-attack on the United States in 2016 were certainly new,” he writes, “but Russia’s strategy was far from unusual. In fact, the Kremlin has a long history of meddling in U.S. and other Western democratic elections and manufacturing disinformation to discredit and divide the West.”

  • U.S. Officials Link COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign to Russian Proxy Accounts

    Officials in the United States have said that thousands of Russia-linked social media accounts have launched a coordinated effort to spread alarm and misinformation about the COVID-19 crisis. State Department officials involved in countering Russian disinformation said on 22 February that fake accounts are being used on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and are operating in multiple languages.

  • Fake News Exacerbates Disease Outbreaks

    The worry that fake news might be used to distort political processes or manipulate financial markets is well established. But less studied is the possibility that misinformation spread could harm human health, especially during the outbreak of an infectious disease.