"Fact-checking has been granted a pivotal role in mitigating the effects of online disinformation, but its effectiveness has nonetheless been questioned. Like any persuasive communication, fact checkers depend on their recipients perceiving both their messages and them as credible. This study invest
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igates the role of the perceived credibility of the fact checker as possible detriment to the effectiveness of fact-checking efforts by means of an online survey-embedded experiment. Results show that the perceived credibility of the fact checker and fact-checking messages is best explained by normative expectations of the roles of fact checkers and trust in traditional media. Some users perceive fact checkers as elite power structures in journalism or, in other words, as collaborative-facilitators for state propaganda. Further, low trust in media and politics predicts perceived credibility of disinformation better than political partisanship. The findings suggest that fact checkers should be more transparent and proactive in communicating their motives and identities. Further implications are discussed." (Abstract)
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"Legislation targeting “fake news” — a contested term used to reference both news and news providers that governments (or others) reject as well as disinformation campaigns — has increased significantly over the last few years, particularly in the wake of COVID-19. This study finds that even
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when technically aimed at curbing disinformation, the majority of “fake news” laws, either passed or actively considered from 2020 to 2023, lessen the protection of an independent press and risk the public’s open access to a plurality of fact-based news. Indeed, governments can — and have — used this type of legislation to label independent journalism as “fake news” or disinformation. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, among the 363 reporters jailed around the world in 2022, 39 were imprisoned for “fake news” or disinformation policy violations. Even within well-intended legislative policies, like Germany’s laws which focus on platform moderation of “illegal content” related to hate speech and Holocaust denial, concerns can arise over potential government censorship." (Page 1)
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"Seit dem Terrorangriff der Hamas auf Israel am 7. Oktober 2023 spielen soziale Netzwerke eine bedeutende und vielfach unterschätzte Rolle bei der Verbreitung von Terrorpropaganda, Falschinformationen, Israelhass, Antisemitismus und Verschwörungsnarrativen. Die Bildungsstätte Anne Frank fasst in
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diesem Report, der im Februar 2024 publiziert wurde, die Beobachtungen relevanter Plattformen aus den ersten drei Monaten nach dem Terroranschlag in einer ad-hoc-Analyse zusammen. Der Report legt den Schwerpunkt auf TikTok – das unter Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen beliebteste und reichweitenstärkste Netzwerk– und schildert die drastischen Auswirkungen des TikTok-Konsums auf die politische Meinungsbildung der jungen Zielgruppe." (https://www.bs-anne-frank.de)
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"Disinformation is a form of offensive counterintelligence via deception and neutralization in order to strategically manipulate an audience or create further fractures in existing divisions. Disinformation strategies include leaking, lying, seeding, and smearing. These strategies vary according to
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whether the information conveyed is true or false, and whether the source uses or hides its identity. This study characterizes the strategic relationship between lying and leaking, and the extent true and false sources of disinformation are believed. Additional characterizations include noisy and neutralizing disinformation, the importance of medium versus message, echo chambers, and the half-life of secrets." (Abstract)
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"Between 2015 and 2017, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) – a Kremlin-backed “troll farm” based in St. Petersburg – executed a propaganda campaign on Twitter to target US voters. Scholarship has expended relatively little effort to study the role of Islamophobia in the IRA’s propaganda ca
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mpaign. Following critical disinformation research, this article demonstrates that Islamophobia, affect, and white identity played a crucial role in the IRA’s targeting of rightwing US voters. With an official release of tweets and associated visual content from Twitter, we use topic modeling and visual analysis to explore both how, and to what extent, the IRA used Islamophobia in its propaganda. To do so, we develop a multimodal distant reading technique to study how the IRA aligned users with contemporary far right social movements by deploying racial and emotional appeals that center on narrating a transnational white identity under threat from Islam and Muslims." (Abstract)
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"Online personal messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are now hugely popular around the world. Yet their role in the spread and social correction of misinformation remains under-researched. We carried out in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the UK public (N = 102) to exp
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lore how social relationships and technological design interact and foster norms regulating how people respond when their everyday social ties share misinformation on these platforms. Conceptualizing messaging as hybrid public-interpersonal communication, we develop a framework that situates online political talk in the context of everyday social interaction. We show that, among our participants, a norm of conflict avoidance is particularly powerful on these platforms and makes people reluctant to speak out. Conflict avoidance should therefore be taken seriously as a contributor to the diffusion of misinformation in everyday life. Policymakers and other stakeholders, including news organizations, should explore new, tailored ways to empower citizens to challenge misinformation in these important online spaces, where automated and algorithmic interventions are impossible." (Abstract)
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"Recent technological developments have raised concerns about threats to democracy because of their potential to distort election outcomes: (a) data-driven voter research enabling political microtargeting and (b) growing news consumption via social media and news aggregators that obfuscate the origi
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n of news items, leading to voters’ unawareness about a news sender’s identity. We provide a theoretical framework in which we can analyze the effects that microtargeting by political interest groups and unawareness have on election outcomes in comparison to “conventional” news reporting. We show which voter groups suffer from which technological development (a) or (b). While both microtargeting and unawareness have negative effects on voter welfare, we show that only unawareness can flip an election. Our model framework allows the theory-based discussion of policy proposals, such as to ban microtargeting or to require news platforms to signal the political orientation of a news item’s originator." (Abstract)
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"Echando mano de ejemplos de buenas prácticas y de casos de proyectos especializados que se ubican en la primera línea contra la desinformación, esta guía propone una conversación, necesaria y urgente, a partir de una selección de lo sucedido en la edición 2023 de la Cumbre Global sobre Desin
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formación, en la que se presentaron ponencias, análisis y rondas de proyectos que dejaron pistas sobre cómo encarar este desafío." (Página 5)
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"The use of the Internet to access news has an impact on African citizens’ perceptions of democracy. Using repeated cross-sectional data from the Afrobarometer survey across 35 African countries over the period 2011–2018, along with an instrumental variable approach, allows addressing potential
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endogeneity bias between Internet use and citizens’ perceptions. The results indicate that using the Internet to obtain information has a significant negative effect on both the preference for and the perception of the extent of democracy. This negative effect is due to several factors. First, Internet use erodes trust in government institutions, mainly in the parliament and the ruling party. It increases the perception that parliament members are involved in corruption. In addition, the erosion of trust is correlated with more political mobilization, in the form of greater participation in demonstrations and voting. These results echo the existing literature and, in particular, hint at the risks of reversal of nascent democratization processes. Finally, the Internet seems to act as a misinformation channel. On the one hand, Internet users’ perception of the extent of democracy and perception of the corruption of legislators diverge from experts’ assessments. On the other hand, Internet use increases the likelihood of inconsistency in respondents’ stances on their preference for democracy. The Internet is not a neutral information channel: it tends to undermine citizens’ preference for democracy while also altering perceptions about political institutions." (Abstract)
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"This study observes content-related indicators of the editorial decisions made by factcheckers during the 2022 Brazilian run-off election. Specifically, it aims to investigate factcheckers’ outputs regarding verification genres, scrutinized actors, types of verified falsehoods, and inspected plat
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forms. The focus on Brazil stems from its reputation as a disinformation hub, owing to social polarization, populist communication, high social media use, low media trust, and intense WhatsApp penetration. Consequently, factchecking agencies have proliferated within Brazil’s media landscape. To provide some hints about the fact-checkers’ editorial choices, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of verification articles (n = 349) published during the second round of the presidential election by four leading fact-checking organizations: Lupa and Aos Fatos (independents), Estadão Verifica (press), and AFP Checamos (global news agency). The results reveal a prioritization of combating online falsehoods (82.2%) spread by anonymous sources, as opposed to verifying public figures’ statements (5.5%), a trend already observed in other media systems. Although Meta’s social networks and Twitter are primarily monitored, other platforms such as TikTok, Kwai, and Telegram are increasingly gaining fact-checkers’ attention. Fact-checkers predominantly scrutinized anonymous disinformation agents. Moreover, they primarily debunked falsehoods targeting the opposition, legacy media, social networking companies, and the Supreme Electoral Court. Despite the anonymity, 77.4% of the verified falsehoods were found to be beneficial to Bolsonaro, while 12% were advantageous to Lula da Silva." (Abstract)
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"This article investigates the production culture and routines of “troll farms” in three Arab countries—Tunisia, Egypt, and Iraq—from a production studies approach. A production studies approach enables us to focus on the working conditions of paid trolls. We employed qualitative methods to
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look inside the “black box” of Arab troll farms. From February to April 2020, we conducted semi-structured interviews with eight disinformation workers at both managerial and staff levels. We propose to understand disinformation work as a specific type of digital labor, characterized by very intense shifts and emotionally burdensome daily tasks, absence of legal job contracts, and highly surveilled work environments. The article contributes to understand disinformation practices outside and beyond the West; it situates disinformation activities within the broader context of digital media industries; it provides a detailed analysis of the features that distinguish troll farms in the Arab world from those that emerged in other regions of the Global South; and it reconnects the research on disinformation to digital labor studies." (Abstract)
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"El rápido avance de la inteligencia artificial y las tecnologías de clonación de voz harán que saber cuándo un audio es real y cuándo es falso sea cada vez más complicado. Y con ello, la manipulación de audio utilizada para fines maliciosos, amenaza con poner en peligro la integridad de inf
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ormaciones clave para el ciudadano [...] VerificAudio es la herramienta de Inteligencia Artificial de Prisa para combatir la desinformación en los contenidos sonoros, una amenaza en ascenso propiciada por el avance de las últimas tecnologías generativas. Estas tecnologías se encuentran a la orden del día, en especial, este año en el que 73 países -casi la mitad de la población mundial- celebrarán comicios cruciales para el panorama internacional. VerificAudio combina técnicas de verificación periodística y modelos de inteligencia artificial avanzados para detectar y analizar la fiabilidad de archivos sonoros con contenido informativo." (Introduction)
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"Tackling Disinformation: A Learning Guide is aimed at helping those already working in the field, or directly impacted by the issues, such as media professionals, civil society actors, DW Akademie partners and experts. It offers insights for evaluating media development activities and rethinking ap
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proaches to disinformation, alongside practical solutions and expert advice, with a focus on the Global South and Eastern Europe." (https://akademie.dw.com)
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"This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of research into discourses of disinformation, misinformation, post-truth, alternative facts, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and 'fake news'. Divided into two sections, it provides a detailed look at the methodological challenges and approaches for s
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tudying disinformation, along with a wide range of case studies covering everything from climate change denial to Covid-19 conspiracies. The studies address how discourses of disinformation are constructed and developed, what rhetorical and persuasive strategies they employ, how disinformation can be discerned from real news, and what steps we might take in order to create a more trustworthy news environment." (Publisher description)
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"Digital technology has revolutionized how political ads are delivered and consumed, giving political campaigns increased possibilities to target and tailor their messaging to specific audiences—a practice known as political microtargeting (PMT). While PMT has potential benefits for society, it al
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so entails significant risks that have yet to be adequately addressed by regulators around the globe. This report offers fundamental guidance on PMT for policymakers, civil society, and other relevant stakeholders, providing recommendations for action and an overview of possible protective measures. Public discourse has so far mostly focused on PMT cases in the Global North, such as US elections or Brexit, whereas the practice is becoming increasingly adopted worldwide. In lower-income countries, the impact of PMT may be felt even more strongly due to context-specific factors such as lower levels of digital skills and media literacy, higher prevalence of political violence, weaker or non-existent legal and regulatory frameworks, and less resilient democratic institutions. This report contributes to balancing the global coverage by focusing on cases and examples from the Global South. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have added to the urgency of investigating PMT, as they amplify the capabilities of targeted messaging and intensify the risk of online disinformation though automated generation and manipulation of content." (Executive summary, page 5)
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"Disinformation is spread in every part of the world. In this comparative report, we analyse similarities and differences based on a 6-part international research series commissioned and supported by the Upgrade Democracy team between 2023-2024 under the theme “strengthening democracy, countering
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disinformation.” We compare the varying information ecosystems; the perpetrators of disinformation and the topics they exploit; protagonists in dealing with disinformation; and the role of state institutions and technological developments in this field. Our analysis shows, among other things, the ambivalent role of governments, which in some regions support the resilience of information ecosystems and in others disseminate disinformation themselves. We also refer to the influence of artificial intelligence on elections, the role of zero-rating and a growing business model for disinformation campaigns. Against this backdrop, we emphasise the importance of a strong civil society and robust regulation of digital platforms that strengthens transparency, openness, and inclusion." (Publisher description)
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