OUR PICKSCloud Cybersecurity Challenges | Mis- and Disinformation Studies | New Infectious Threats, and more
·· What’s Old Is New Again: Cold War Lessons for Countering Disinformation
Information warfare attacks may seem new, but they are not
·· Community-Based Strategies for Combating Misinformation: Learning from a Popular Culture Fandom
A strong sense of community builds resilience to misinformation
·· Mis- and Disinformation Studies Are Too Big to Fail: Six Suggestions for the Field’s Future
Developing a more critical, interdisciplinary, and rigorous scholarly discipline
·· Saudi Counter-Extremism Center Works with Telegram to Remove Five Million Extremist Posts in Past Two Months
5,269,078 extremist and violent items were removed from the platform
·· Fighter Jets Scrambled After Bomb Threat on Singapore Airlines Flight from San Francisco
Fake bomb threats are fairly common in aviation
·· Analysis: New Infectious Threats Are Coming. The U.S. Isn’t Ready.
The U.S. remains wholly unprepared to combat new pathogens
·· Federal Agencies Face Cloud Cybersecurity Challenges
FedRAMP’s process for monitoring the status of security controls over cloud services is limited
What’s Old Is New Again: Cold War Lessons for Countering Disinformation (Calder Walton, Texas National Security Review)
Hostile foreign states are using weaponized information to attack the United States. Russia and China are disseminating disinformation about domestic U.S. race relations and COVID-19 to undermine and discredit the U.S. government. These information warfare attacks, which threaten U.S. national security, may seem new, but they are not. Using an applied history methodology and a wealth of previously classified archival records, this paper uses two case studies to reveal how and why a hostile foreign state, the Soviet Union, targeted America with similar disinformation in the past. The methods that the U.S. government devised during the Cold War to counter Soviet disinformation are still relevant, even in today’s information landscape. By applying that history, this paper recommends developing a new U.S. strategy for countering hostile state disinformation: through promoting digital literacy, which requires a whole-of-society, generational effort. Establishing a coherent strategy is important because disinformation will be a major theme of 21st-century international security, as societies and governments become increasingly interconnected.
Community-Based Strategies for Combating Misinformation: Learning from a Popular Culture Fandom (Jin Ha Lee, Nicole Santero, and Arpita Bhattacharya, Misinformation Review)
Through the lens of one of the fastest-growing international fandoms, this study explores everyday misinformation in the context of networked online environments. Findings show that fans experience a range of misinformation, similar to what we see in other political, health, or crisis contexts. However, the strong sense of community and shared purpose of the group is the basis for effective grassroot efforts and strategies to build collective resilience to misinformation, which offer a model for combating misinformation in ways that move beyond the individual context to incorporate shared community values and tactics.
