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News on Targeted Disinformation
The violent insurrection against the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, may prove to be a critical juncture in terms of how our media ecosystem treats disinformation and the individuals and organizations who produce it. On that day, we witnessed exactly what those of us who research the disinformation problem have feared the most, a […]
By Philip M. NapoliLast week, a mob incited by President Trump stormed the United States Capitol building. Rioters broke windows, beat law enforcement officers, vandalized offices and tried to track down members of Congress with mayhem in mind. At least five people died. For those of us who cover climate change for a living, the blatant lies about […]
By John SchwartzSociety has been transformed by a technology revolution and its 24/7 influence on so many aspects of our reality. The COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide movement for racial justice have made it even clearer how essential these tools are for our daily lives. Silicon Valley has clearly followed through on its promise to change the […]
Conservative radio host Mark Levin lambasted the Trump supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol building and shut down the electoral certification process on Wednesday afternoon as “fools” and “idiots” who should be prosecuted. But, he reassured his listeners, “None of you had anything to do with it. . . . You, we, are the law-abiding […]
By Jeremy BarrAnti-vaccination movements are not new to the online landscape, and tech platforms have long been grappling with how to handle them. But false claims and conspiracies about Covid vaccines are already looking more difficult to police than those social media companies have had to deal with in the past. Part of the trouble is that […]
By Alexandra S. LevineIn August I was on the phone with my mother, a 70-year-old Korean immigrant, to discuss the upcoming election. In the past, she had complained that President Trump was a lunatic, so I naturally assumed that she would support — or at least be neutral about — Joe Biden.“I don’t like him either,” she told […]
By Cathy Park HongIn the months leading up to the presidential election, reporting detailing the importance of the Black and Latinx vote proliferated across the media. As uncertainty increased about which election-related issues were most important to communities of color, many journalists looked to researchers for insights. But as researchers from Black and Latinx communities, we found a […]
By Daniel Acosta-Ramos and Jacquelyn MasonToday Facebook announced the takedown of three separate networks that targeted communities across Africa. Facebook shared the assets with the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and Graphika before they were suspended. SIO collaborated with colleagues at Graphika on two reports analyzing these networks, both of which we published today. The first network consisted of 126 Pages, 16 Groups, 211 profiles, […]
By Stanford Internet ObservatoryThe widespread embrace of conspiracy and disinformation amounts to a “mass radicalization” of Americans, and increases the risk of right-wing violence, veteran security officials and terrorism researchers warn. At conferences, in op-eds and at agency meetings, domestic terrorism analysts are raising concern about the security implications of millions of conservatives buying into baseless right-wing claims. […]
By Hannah Allam Following a preliminary investigation published in 2019, the EU DisinfoLab uncovered a massive operation targeting international institutions and serving Indian interests. “Indian Chronicles” – the name we gave to this operation – resurrected dead media, dead think-tanks and NGOs. It even resurrected dead people. This network is active in Brussels and Geneva in producing and […]
By Gary Machado, Alexandre Alaphilippe, Roman Adamczyk, and Antoine GregoireThe insidious problem of online violence against women journalists is increasingly spilling offline, with potentially deadly consequences, a new global survey suggests. Twenty percent of women journalists and media workers who participated in the survey – run by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – […]
By Julie Posetti, Jackie Harrison and Silvio Waisbord