Chris Zappone, May 31st 2019, The Agehttps://www.theage.com.au/world/asia/facebook-groups-used-to-promote-china-s-belt-and-road-in-the-west-20190530-p51slm.html The groups publicise stories around China’s plan for global economic integration while criticising the Western rule-based order, sometimes using Russian-backed media. The group 21SilkRoad, which includes Australians, shares a mix of news and material linked to Russia’s global propaganda apparatus, to “build a virtual community of the major […]Read More

Bethany Allen-Ebrahiniam and Zach Dorfman, May 20th 2019, Defense One https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/05/china-has-been-running-global-influence-campaigns-years/157124/ Pro-China protests ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics were orchestrated by Chinese officials. The world thought they were a spontaneous showing of Chinese nationalism. In the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, with the torch relay soon set to pass through San Francisco, […]Read More

Cade Metz and Scott Blumenthal, June 7th 2019, New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/technology/ai-text-disinformation.html In 2017, an online disinformation campaign spread against the “White Helmets,” claiming that the group of aid volunteers was serving as an arm of Western governments to sow unrest in Syria. This false information was convincing. But the Russian organization behind the campaign […]Read More

InfoAccessFund.Org is open for business.  Organizations interested in countering state-sponsored disinformation are invited to apply for access to the website www.infoaccessfund.org in order to see the current Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), which focuses on Russian disinformation. The Information Access Fund (IAF) web-portal supports delivery of efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter disinformation and […]Read More

Pew Research Center, June 5th 2019Amy Mitchell, Jeffrey Gottfried, Sophia Fedeli, Galen Stocking and Mason Walkerhttps://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/ Politicians viewed as major creators of it, but journalists seen as the ones who should fix itRead More

Kevin Roose and Kate Conger, June 5th 2019, New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/youtube-remove-extremist-videos.html?searchResultPosition=2&login=email&auth=login-email YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its popular service. The new policy will ban “videos alleging that a […]Read More

US yanks funds for anti-Iran Twitter feed after complaints Associated Press in the Washington Post, June 1st 2019 The State Department has suspended funding for an online project aimed at fighting Iranian disinformation after it tweeted harsh criticism of individual human rights workers, academics and journalists, some of whom are U.S. citizens. Facebook and Twitter […]Read More

The Week in Tech: Disinformation’s Huge Inaction ProblemJamie Condliffe, May 31 2019, New York TimesFacebook’s ‘many open questions.’ G.D.P.R. is one year old! Facebook Isn’t Deleting the Fake Pelosi Video. Should it?The Associated Press in the New York Times, May 30 2019When a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi began making the rounds on […]Read More

John Villasensor, Brookings Institution, Monday, June 3, 2019https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2019/06/03/deepfakes-social-media-and-the-2020-election/ What happens when you mix easy access to increasingly sophisticated technology for producing deepfake videos, a high-stakes election, and a social media ecosystem built on maximizing views, likes, and shares? America is about to find out. As I explained in a TechTank post in February 2019, “deepfakes […]Read More

Our Take Insight into the state of political affairs in Europe: ASD Senior Fellow Kristine Berzina appeared on Euronews’ Raw Politics to discuss the fallout from the recent Austrian political scandal and the latest developments related to the European Council Summit. Berzina highlighted the risks that working with far-right parties pose to more centrist parties […]Read More