• Your Brain Is Better Than You at Busting Deepfakes

    Deepfake videos, images, audio, or text appear to be authentic, but in fact are computer generated clones designed to mislead you and sway public opinion. They are the new foot soldiers in the spread of disinformation and are rife – they appear in political, cybersecurity, counterfeiting, and border control realms. While observers can’t consciously recognize the difference between real and fake faces, their brains can.

  • During Pandemic: More News, More Worry

    Anxiety and fear went hand in hand with trying to learn more about COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic in the United States — and the most distressed people were turning on the television and scrolling through social media.

  • Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories May Not Be Increasing

    A new analysis contradicts popular thinking about beliefs in conspiracy theories, suggesting that such beliefs may not have actually increased over time. The new findings challenge widespread perceptions by the public, scholars, journalists, and policymakers.

  • These Red Flags Can Let You Know When You’re in an Online Echo Chamber

    Online echo chambers are virtual spaces that gather like-minded individuals. Research has shown that people are more likely to believe and share information they encounter in these spaces, because it confirms their existing beliefs. Somesocial media users who routinely engage in this style of communication also spread disinformation.

  • Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Divide, Weaken Western Coalition

    A new report reviews ongoing Russian influence efforts aimed at undermining and dividing the Western defensive coalition supporting Ukraine, as well as influencing public opinion of Russia’s war against Ukraine favorably toward Russia.

  • China’s Disinformation Campaign Against Rare Earth Processing Facilities

    China dominates the production and processing of rare-earth elements (REEs). In order to lessen this dependence on the critical minerals, the U.S. government has been supporting the development of U.S. REE sources. China has been trying to prevent this shift by launching a disinformation campaign: China’ intelligence services have created social media accounts of fake local environmentalists who spread disinformation to local communities about the REE facilities being built nearby.

  • I Watched Hundreds of Flat-Earth Videos to Learn How Conspiracy Theories Spread – and What It Could Mean for Fighting Disinformation

    About 11% of Americans believe the Earth might be flat. It is tempting to dismiss “flat Earthers” as mildly amusing, but we ignore their arguments at our peril. Polling shows that there is an overlap between conspiracy theories, some of which can act as gateways for radicalization. QAnon and the great replacement theory, for example, have proved deadly more than once.

  • Technology Can Detect Fake News in Videos

    Social media represent a major channel for the spreading of fake news and disinformation. This situation has been made worse with recent advances in photo and video editing and artificial intelligence tools, which make it easy to tamper with audiovisual files, for example with so-called deepfakes, which combine and superimpose images, audio and video clips to create montages that look like real footage.

  • Hate Sites: Using the Broader Abortion Argument to Spread Racism, Extremism

    Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists are using the debate around women’s reproductive rights to promote racist and extremist agendas.

  • Can Reforming Social Media Save American Democracy?

    When social media exploded in the mid-2000s, retweeting, sharing and liking posts appeared to give average citizens the power to share their opinions far and wide. The problem, according to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, is that online social networks didn’t really end up giving everyone the voice that many thought it would. “It empowered four groups who take advantage of the viral dynamics of social media. That is the far right, the far left, trolls and Russian intelligence,” he says.

  • Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State Networks on Facebook 

    Researchers found that the network of support on social media for al-Shabaab and Islamic State extended across several platforms, including decentralized messaging applications such as Element and RocketChat, and encrypted messaging platforms such as Telegram, as well as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. 

  • When Hurricanes Strike, Social Media Can Save Lives

    Social media can be a powerful tool for cities to communicate and to collect information to deploy emergency resources where needed most.

  • Buffalo Attack Footage Spread Quickly Across Platforms, Has Been Online for Days

    The livestream of the accused Buffalo shooter’s deadly attack at a Buffalo supermarket was available briefly via Twitch, but the footage spread quickly across online platforms, and remains online for public consumption.

  • How to Avoid Extremism on Social Media

    The internet has been a haven for extremists since long before most people even knew it existed. Today, extremists share their likes and tweet their thoughts like everyone else. But they have also spun off into an ever-widening array of social media sites with greater appetites for hateful words and violent images.

  • Encouraging Individuals to Take Action Against Truth Decay

    Facts and analysis are playing a diminishing role in American public life—a phenomenon called Truth Decay—so RAND is launching a public information campaign on social media to build understanding of Truth Decay and how individuals can tackle it by scrutinizing information they believe and share.