Social Media are being weaponizedEconomist, March 14th, 2019https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/03/16/preparing-for-conflicts-by-cyber-means When Latvia conducted its biggest-ever national military exercise last August, which mobilized more than 10,000 people, a group of researchers discovered that using only open-source information they could identify about 10% of the individuals involved—and use that knowledge to track the exercise in real time. They also […]Read More

Our TakeIn a new paper, ASD Director Laura Rosenberger and Research Assistant Tom Morley show how the Russian government and its proxies nurture and shape illiberal populist movements as a means of destabilizing the West. Earlier this month, Rosenberger presented the paper to a conference, “Global Populisms and their International Diffusion,” at Stanford University’s Freeman […]Read More

The Department of Defense continued support for fundamental research by selecting 12 faculty investigators for awards through the fiscal year 2018 Minerva Research Initiative.  Several of the winners:The Role of Emotions in Adversarial Information CampaignsPI: Susannah Paletz (University of Maryland) Topic Area (ONR): Adversarial Information Campaigns Monitoring the Content and Measuring the Effectiveness of Russian […]Read More

‘Sealioning’ is a common trolling tactic on social media – what is it? Marshall Shepherd, March 7, 2019, Forbes magazinehttps://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/03/07/sealioning-is-a-common-trolling-tactic-on-social-media-what-is-it/#710d87597a41 There are times in life that you know something when you see it. In competitive sports, a very talented player usually stands out above the others. I can identify within seconds whether I will dislike the […]Read More