Disinformation

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Hoodwinked: Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour on Facebook

This briefing provides an overview of ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’ (CIB) on Facebook. It reviews the information made public on CIB through Facebook’s own reporting between July 2018 and July 2020, assessing the scale of CIB across Facebook and Instagram, the profit Facebook has made from it and the intricacies of the networks themselves. Ahead of the US presidential elections, this briefing highlights the persistent threat of ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’ on Facebook.

Disinformation briefing: Narratives around Black Lives Matter and voter fraud

This short briefing details the methodology and key findings of a study conducted jointly by the ISD team and Politico. Leveraging data from across social media platforms, this investigation seeks to understand online discussions around the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the issue of voter fraud ahead of the US Presidential election.

QAnon and Conspiracy Beliefs

The findings from this study provide important context for understanding the relationship between QAnon and the broader problem of conspiracy theory beliefs. A majority of Americans know nothing about QAnon and fewer than one-in-ten have a favorable view toward it; yet, a majority of those who recognize and believe in QAnon conspiracy theories are not QAnon supporters (most said they had not even heard of QAnon).

Political Monopoly: How Europe’s New Authoritarians Stifle Democracy and Get Away With it

"Political Monopoly: How Europe’s New Authoritarians Stifle Democracy and Get Away With it" is a new analysis of how Europe’s new authoritarians in Hungary, Poland and elsewhere consolidate power while maintaining a democratic facade. Comparing them to economic monopolies, it proposes a framework of “political anti-trust” to restore competitive politics.

Click Here For Outrage: Disinformation in the European Parliamentary Elections 2019

This report details the findings of ISD’s research on disinformation activities during the European Parliamentary Elections in 2019. It lays out the tactics and actors involved in covert disinformation campaigns, the targets of their activities, and what that might mean for the future of disinformation around elections and beyond.

Hosting the ‘Holohoax’: A Snapshot of Holocaust Denial Across Social Media

This briefing brings together the observations of a coalition of organisation who monitored the 2019 European Parliamentary Elections to identify distortion, disruption or interference campaigns and the technology companies response to them. You can read more about ISD's work monitoring the 2019 EU Elections in our interim report, published 24th May 2019.

Developing a Civil Society Response to Online Manipulation

This document presents a vision for a pan-civil societal response to online manipulation. In part, it argues, this will come down to capability: building a pooled detection capacity to function as a transparent, public interest alter­native to those built by the tech giants. In part, it will require new organisational philosophies and forms of co-operation, and in part new approaches to funding and support.

The 101 of Disinformation Detection

Disinformation can threaten the activities, objectives and individuals associated with civil society groups and their work. This toolkit lays out an approach that organisations can undertake to begin to track online disinformation on subjects that they care about. The process is intended to have a very low barrier to entry, with each stage achievable using either over-the-counter or free-to-use social media analysis tools.