commbox Disinformation & Misinformation

Disinformation & Misinformation

Filter

712

Sort by:

Direction:

External Link (27)

The Road Ahead: Mapping Civil Society Responses to Disinformation

Samantha Bradshaw, Lisa-Maria Neudert

Washington, DC: National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (2021), 27 pp.

"Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) bring a wide range of skill sets to the problem of digital disinformation. Some organizations focus on digital media literacy and education; others engage in advocacy and policy work. Another segment has developed expertise in fact-checking and verification. Other ... organizations have developed refined technical skills for extracting and analyzing data from social media platforms. This research yielded several clear observations about the state of CSO responses to disinformation and, in turn, suggests several recommendations for paths forward. • Prioritize Skill Diffusion and Knowledge Transfer. Civil society organizations seeking funding for counter-disinformation initiatives should emphasize the importance of skill diffusion and knowledge-transfer initiatives. The siloed nature of disinformation research points to a growing need to blend technical expertise with deep cultural and political knowledge. • CSO researchers lack sufficient access to social media data. Survey respondents identified insufficient access to data as a challenge. Sometimes data are not made available to CSOs; in other instances, data are made available in formats that are not workable for meaningful research purposes. Unequal access to the data that private companies do provide can exacerbate regional inequities, and the nature of data sharing by social media platforms can unduly shape the space for inquiry by civil society and other researchers. Funders, platforms, and other key actors should develop approaches that provide more consistent, inclusive data access to CSOs. • Duplicative programming hampers innovation. CSOs drawing on similar tools, approaches, and techniques to meet similar goals pointed to three main factors preventing more specialized, innovative initiatives: lack of coordination, lack of specific expertise, and lack of flexible funding. Community building and collaboration among relevant organizations deserve more investment, as do initiatives that partner larger, established organizations with smaller or growing ones, or pool efforts, skill sets, and expertise to encourage diverse research by design rather than by coincidence. • Relationships with tech platforms vary across regions. Surveyed CSOs often held simultaneously skeptical and positive opinions about their relationships with social media companies. Some receive preferential access to data and even funding for their work (raising concerns about independence), while others report a lack of responsiveness from company representatives. In the Global South and Eastern Europe, many CSOs expressed concern that platforms failed to meaningfully engage with them on issues of critical concern. • More flexible funding and more diverse research are both necessary. To encourage greater platform accountability across varied geographic contexts, CSOs and their funders should draw on the perspectives of specific, under-analyzed communities." (Executive summary, page 3-4) more

External Link (29)

How Journalists Can Address Misinformation on Telegram

Bermet Talant

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2021), 35 pp.

"As of July 2021, Telegram had 550 million active users worldwide – more than the individual user bases of Twitter, Snapchat or Discord. It is the fifth most-popular messaging app after Facebook-owned Whatsapp and Messenger, and WeChat and QQ which dominate the Chinese market [...] For this paper, ... more

External Link (21)

Edelman Trust Barometer 2021: Global Report

Edelman (2021), 58 slides

"After a year of unprecedented disaster and turbulence – the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis, the global outcry over systemic racism and political instability – the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals an epidemic of misinformation and widespread mistrust of societal institutions and leade ... more

Download (0)

A Race to the Bottom: Populism, Mis/Disinformation and South Africa's 2021 Election

Phumzile van Damme et al.

Anti-Disinformation Project (2021), 103 pp.

"For analysing populist and dis- and minformation-driven campaigning, three sub-groupings of South African Twitter deserve particular attention. A) A community of radical populists made of black consciousness voices emphasising the struggle against 'white monopoly capital,' using this phrase as a di ... more

Download (0)

Combating Information Manipulation: A Playbook for Elections and Beyond
Key Guidance

Daniel Arnaudo, Samantha Bradshaw, Hui Hui Ooi, Kaleigh Schwalbe, Amy Studdart, Vera Zakem, Amanda Zink

National Democratic Institute (NDI); International Republican Institute (IRI); Stanford Internet Observatory (2021), 59 pp.

"The playbook approach consists of how to (1) identify ongoing information manipulation campaigns; (2) develop real-time and short-term responses; and (3) build long-term resilience to information manipulation. While we outline three distinct steps in this playbook, the process for combating informa ... more

Download (0)

Disinformation in the Brazilian pre-election context: Probing the content, spread and implications of fake news about Lula da Silva

Tatiana Dourado, Susana Salgado

Communication Review, volume 24, issue 4 (2021), pp. 297-319

"This research scrutinizes the content, spread, and implications of disinformation in Brazil’s 2018 pre-election period. It focuses specifically on the most widely shared fake news about Lula da Silva and links these with the preexisting polarization and political radicalization, ascertaining the ... more

Download (0)

Hashtag Wars: Political Disinformation and Discursive Struggles on Twitter Conversations During the 2018 Brazilian Presidential Campaign

Felipe Bonow Soares, Raquel Recuero

Social Media + Society, volume 7, issue 2 (2021), 13 pp.

"In this article, we analyze the spread of political disinformation in events of discursive struggles on Twitter, during the 2018 presidential election in Brazil. These were disputes for the hegemonic narrative between two stories based on opposed hashtags: one based on news from mainstream media an ... more

External Link (17)

Fighting Fake News: A Study of Online Misinformation Regulation in the Asia Pacific

Andrea Carson

Melbourne: La Trobe University (2021), xvi, 117 pp.

External Link (24)

Political messaging and information disorder during the 2020 Ghanaian elections: A multi-study analysis of verified misinformation and political social media engagement

Adedeji Adekunle

Abuja: Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) (2021), 37 pp.

External Link (24)

Strengthening Public Trust in the Media as a Response to Disinformation and Propaganda

Milica Bogdanovic

Podgorica: South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) (2021), 27 pp.

External Link (23)

Information Bedlam: Russian and Chinese Information Operations During Covid-19

Edward Lucas, Jake Morris, Corina Rebegea

Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) (2021), 20 pp.

"Based on a literature review through January 2021, evaluated at an expert seminar, this policy brief provides a baseline analysis of changing tactics, narratives, and distribution strategies in Russian and Chinese information operations (IOs) relating to the covid-19 pandemic. Key findings: China c ... more

External Link (17)

Sticking to the Facts, Building trust: Our Cure for Disinformation

Lausanne: Fondation Hirondelle (2021), 9 pp.

"Fondation Hirondelle's approach to disinformation centres on the fundamental principles of journalism and on the lessons learned from over 25 years of applying these principles in highly fragile contexts, where access to reliable information for the majority is not a given, and where rumours, hate ... more

External Link (17)

Google Scholar (14)

WorldCat (13)

Data Science for Fake News: Surveys and Perspective

Deepak P., Tanmoy Chakraborty, Cheng Long, Santhosh Kumar G.

Cham: Springer (2021), xiv, 302 pp.

"This book provides an overview of fake news detection, both through a variety of tutorial-style survey articles that capture advancements in the field from various facets and in a somewhat unique direction through expert perspectives from various disciplines. The approach is based on the idea that ... more

External Link (18)

The Digital Enquirer Kit

Tactical Tech (2021)

"The Digital Enquirer Kit is an e-learning course that guides learners through lessons on how to prevent the spread of misinformation, available on the free platform atingi.org. The course covers topics including media literacy, verification, and how to navigate the internet safely. The first four m ... more

External Link (22)

Desmontando la mentira: Dos años bajo la lupa del OVFN Observatorio Venezolano de Fake News

Mariela Torrealba, Pablo Paz, Ysabel Viloria (eds.)

Caracas: Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB); abediciones; Medianálisis (2021), 210 pp.

"Con la vista fija en una mejor calidad en la percepción misma de la información, así como en el desarrollo de competencias ciudadanas para disminuir la vulnerabilidad a la manipulación y contrarrestar el secuestro mismo de la libertad de consciencia, surge el Observatorio Venezolano de Fake New ... more

External Link (21)

#StopXinjiang Rumors: The CCP’s Decentralised Disinformation Campaign

Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Albert Zhang, Jacob Wallis

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), International Cyber Policy Centre (2021), 50 pp.

"This report analyses two Chinese state-linked networks seeking to influence discourse about Xinjiang across platforms including Twitter and YouTube. This activity targeted the Chinese-speaking diaspora as well as international audiences, sharing content in a variety of languages. Both networks atte ... more

External Link (30)

MENA Monitor: Arabic COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Online

Ciarán O'Connor, Moustafa Ayad

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2021), 19 pp.

"Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the subsequent development and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines are rampant across Arabic-language Facebook pages and groups. They are also linked to a larger network of anti-vaccination websites, Twitter accounts and YouTube channels across the web. Researchers f ... more

External Link (23)

National Regulatory and Self-Regulatory Framework Against Hate Speech and Disinformation: Factsheet Montenegro

Milica Bogdanovic

Ljubljana: South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM); Peace Institute; Montenegro Media Institute (2021), 19 pp.

"Competent institutions should react in case of spreading hate speech and introduce appropriate measures to combat the spread of disinformation, which would serve as a middle ground between arresting those who spread disinformation and a too passive approach to this problem. In addition to this, the ... more

External Link (17)

Combating Foreign Disinformation on Social Media: Study Overview and Conclusions

Raphael Cohen, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Joe Cheravitch et al.

Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation (2021), xvi, 119 pp.

"Drawing on a host of different primary and secondary sources and more than 150 original interviews from across the U.S. government, the joint force, industry, civil society, and subject-matter experts from nine countries around the world, researchers examined how China, Russia, and North Korea have ... more

Combating Information Manipulation: A Playbook for Elections and Beyond Key Guidance

Combating Information Manipulation: A Playbook for Elections and Beyond
Key Guidance