Disinformation
How false narratives are defining armed conflicts
How digital propaganda escalates the war on truth
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How distorting the past is serving regimes today
How nation states buy influence
How family values are being wielded as a major soft power and foreign policy tool
In the febrile final 72 hours of Britain’s snap Christmas election, a tide of disinformation began sweeping across the UK internet, with Conservative-leaning trolls and bots coming out in force. Here’s a timeline of what happened. Sunday December 8, 11am It started with a photograph. A mother’s picture of her sick son sleeping on the
The owners of a Russian YouTube channel for children are facing up to 20 years in prison on felony charges for “sexual violence against minors” after they published a video interview with a gay man. The YouTube channel, Real Talk, which takes its inspiration from HiHo Kids, outraged State Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy who
Facebook announced it took down dozens of pages shown to be spreading Russian-backed disinformation in Africa after the company was tipped off by a group of Stanford researchers. The pages were aimed at audiences in eight countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Madagascar, Sudan and Libya. The pages’ scope was significant:
Twitter’s decision to stop running political ads has divided opinions among disinformation experts, politicians and journalists about how the move will impact free speech. The social media site with 139 million daily users will no longer allow political advertising on the platform, with CEO Jack Dorsey writing that “political messages reach should be earned, not
A new report underlines how we have to be vigilant about what we find on the internet as not only political misinformation runs rampant, but so does corporate disinformation. As governments across the world battle massive disinformation campaigns on social media and elsewhere, cyber criminals seem to have discovered that there’s quite a lot of
Over a week after the speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the start of the impeachment inquiry related to President Donald Trump’s efforts to press Ukraine to investigate a leading political rival, the fast escalating investigation has given Russian broadcasters a fresh line of attack. With the war in Donbas in its fifth year,
The online disinformation industry is booming — and unless a number of key measures are implemented, it’s only set to get more lucrative, a new report warns. Around a quarter of a billion dollars in ad revenue is funding disinformation, according to estimates in the study by the Global Disinformation Index, a London nonprofit. The
While Nigeria recently celebrated three years without a single case of polio, Pakistan is facing an alarming surge in new cases. Pakistan has seen over 50 cases of polio this year, kicking off various mass awareness campaigns and a mass immunization program across the country that will give drops to 8.6 million children in 48
Reading a fake news story can lead us to have false memories, according to a new study carried out during the 2018 Irish abortion referendum. Researchers in Ireland and the U.S. teamed up to look at what happens to our memories when we come across disinformation, and conducted the peer-reviewed study during the week leading
On Monday, Twitter announced it investigated and removed over 900 China-linked accounts that “were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground.” The statement said these active accounts were part of 200,000 accounts, which were eliminated before they
Russia has denied participating in a disinformation campaign after the European Commission released a preliminary report, saying it had found evidence that sources from the country meddled in the European elections, which took place at the end of May. The report, published on Friday, found “continued and sustained disinformation activity” by Russian groups to spread
Hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets angered by the results in Kazakhstan’s snap election which crowned their long-time leader’s hand-picked successor as the new president. So what did the Interior Ministry do? Arrest 600 demonstrators and label them as “radical elements seeking to destabilize society.” Kazakh authorities are using a familiar disinformation playbook