Active Measures #17 – A Newsletter of Political Warfare, Influence, and Information Campaigns Here are the top stories seen this week: The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018 | Phillip N. Howard, Bharath Ganesh, Dimitra Liotsiou, John Kelly, and Camille Francois | Oxford University Computational Propaganda Research Project The Tactics […]Read More

Dispatch from the Alliance for Securing Democracy Our Take ASD, in partnership with Graphika, released a beta-version of our “Information Operations Archive,” a searchable repository of more than 10 million posts connected to Russian and Iranian information operations on social media. We are releasing an early version due to increased research interest after the publication […]Read More

A New Doctrine for Cyberwarfare & Information Operations Senator Mark Warner (D, VA) spoke at the Center for a New American Security on the need for a U.S. cyber doctrine in the face of growing threats from traditional cyber attacks and information operations.  This event highlights one of the more comprehensive perspectives from the legislative […]Read More

Weekly round-up of cognitive security-related articles from the Washington Post. Russian disinformation campaign targets Syria’s beleaguered rescue workers Louisa Loveluck, Washington Post, December 18th, 2018 A Russian disinformation campaign has pushed Syria’s best-known civilian rescue group into the crosshairs of President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces, turning its volunteers into hunted prey, according to a team of open-source […]Read More

Weekly round-up of cognitive security-related articles from the New York Times. In France, School Lessons Ask: Which Twitter Post Should You Trust? Adam Satariano and Elian Peltier, New York Times, December 13th, 2018 A group of teenagers recently swarmed into a room at Collège Henri Barbusse near Lyon, France, for a class typically dedicated to learning Spanish. […]Read More

Russia’s IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the U.S., 2012-2018 Philip N. Howard, Bharath Ganesh, Dimitra Liotsiou, John Kelly & Camille François, University of Oxford, Computational Propaganda Research Project REPORT HERE Plenty of journalism: Washington Post, LawFare, Fox News, NY Times, Xinhua, Wired, BBC News, Techcrunch, Sputnik News, France 24, and Deutsche Welle Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) […]Read More

Dispatch from the Alliance for Securing Democracy Our Take ASD’s Authoritarian Interference Tracker is now live! The Tracker catalogs over 400 incidents of Russian government interference in 42 countries since 2000. You can explore the tracker here. You can also watch ASD’s event that launched the tracker or read about ASD’s launch of the tracker […]Read More

Active Measures #16 – A Newsletter of Political Warfare, Influence, and Information Campaigns Here are the top stories seen this week: Russia’s Disinformation Chief Takes Fresh Aim at America | Anna Nemtsova | The Daily Beast Cold War Propaganda Spread The Myth That Science Isn’t Political | Rachel Becker | The Verge Agents of Doubt | Joby […]Read More

Facebook responds to the Guardian on Fact-Checking Facebook’s newroom responded to an article in the Guardian on the effectiveness of their fact checking.  Both the article and Facebook’s response are worth a read: Sam Levin’s December 13th, 2018 article in the Guardian, ‘They don’t care’: Facebook factchecking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties. […]Read More

Twitter Transparency Report Twitter’s biannual report came out this week: Evolving our Twitter Transparency Report: Expanded Data and Insights The report, from Twitter, highlights trends in legal requests, intellectual property-related requests, Twitter Rules enforcement, platform manipulation, and email privacy best practices. The report also provides insight into whether or not they take action on these requests. […]Read More