Category: INFORMATION WARFARE

A better way to counter astroturfing: Disinformation, technology, and democracy in transition

     

How can you distinguish real netizens from participants in a hidden influence campaign on Twitter? It’s not easy, say analysts Franziska Keller, David Schoch, Sebastian Stier and JungHwan Yang.  We examined eight hidden propaganda… Read more »

Democracies ill-equipped to counter info warfare in ‘Age of Durable Disorder’

     

A coordinated cyberespionage campaign using phishing to harvest passwords from mobile phones and computers has targeted U.N. relief agencies, the International Red Cross and other non-governmental organizations groups for the… Read more »

AI, big data and democracy’s future: Misinformation, echo chambers & targeted propaganda?

     

While digital transformation has enriched societal discourse, it has also led to an increase of “misinformation, echo chambers and targeted propaganda” and provided authoritarian states with new means of surveillance… Read more »

‘Tsunami Democràtic’: Emerging risk of virtual societal warfare

     

Virtual societal warfare is a new category of cyberaggression that seeks to manipulate or disrupt the information essential for the effective functioning of economic and social systems, RAND researchers Michael… Read more »

Social media ‘weaponized’: Collective action needed to halt ‘abuse and deception’ of democratic process

     

Should we accept that the current social media model is incompatible with a healthy democracy? Social media has changed the nature of democratic conversation, argues Andrew Marantz [@andrewmarantz], author of… Read more »

Targeted: How social media is breaking democracy

     

Russian government-backed cyber aggression is heightening concerns from the west following a spate of high-profile incidents, prompting threats of countermeasures from the likes of Nato, the EU and UK, the… Read more »

From Gutenberg to Google: Disinformation wars ‘only just getting started’

     

British populist Nigel Farage and his Brexit party have voted against stronger European Union measures aimed at countering “highly dangerous” Russian disinformation, the Guardian reports: The party cast their votes… Read more »

‘Blunting China’s Sharp Power’: Long arm of Beijing threatens free speech

     

The true nature of China’s sharp power was on display this week after Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team, posted a somewhat anodyne message of solidarity… Read more »

1989: A reminder of democracy’s fragility and resilience

     

Three decades ago this fall, a political earthquake rocked the barrier that had divided Europe and the city of Berlin for nearly five decades. The so-called Autumn of Nations saw… Read more »

A new way to hack democracy? How to deal with the ‘Digital Disinformation Mess’

     

The rise of political impersonation threatens a core aspect of democracy: the process by which federal agencies canvass public opinion before enacting new regulations, BuzzFeed’s Jeremy Singer-Vine and Kevin Collier report:… Read more »