Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldThe Tech > Media > Fight disinformation - (422)
Disinformation campaigns by states, economic opportunists, and the misinformed themselves threaten to erode the common understandings, shared identities, and empirical bedrock that underlies our collective decisionmaking. While disinformation campaigns have used mass media to spread for many years, social media platforms have proven an exceptionally hospitable environment for the proliferation of falsehoods. Those looking to limit disinformation’s effect on society and bolster truth in media have likewise turned to technology to help keep up with the volume and precision of constantly evolving disinformation campaigns.
Suggested reading:
- Matt Stempeck's research into how the Code for All network has advanced its strategies for fighting disinformation in different contexts around the world (2022)
- Digital Disinformation and Vote Suppression, The Brennan Center for Justice (2020)
- Virus Experts Aren’t Getting the Message Out Renée DiResta in The Atlantic (2020)
- Safeguarding Democracy Against Disinformation Report by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (2020)
- Browser Plug-ins That Spot Fake News Show The Difficulty Of Tackling The ‘Information Apocalypse’ Can software that spots Photoshopped images help stem the tide of misinformation? The Verge (2018)
- Can an AI Fact-Checker Solve India’s Fake News Problem? An Indian startup is using an AI tool to curb misinformation. But India poses unique challenges for the technology. Undark (2019)
- Factchecking, a Quartz Daily Obsession media collage (2019)
- Fake news and fact-checking: 7 studies you should know about, a roundup from Journalist’s Resource (2020)
- The children’s storyteller helping Taiwan sort fact from fiction, a helpful deep dive into disinfo-fighting tech (and misappropriation through national ‘fake news laws’) in Asia. Al Jazeera (2020).
- CivicSpace.tech guide to Disinformation, including its relevance to civic space, opportunities, risks, and case studies (2020)
Showing 422 Results
Trusted Messenger Program
New York CityPGP’s health care professional networks, health care professional training program, and its significant health communications infrastructure form one program: the Trusted Messenger Program.
Lessons Learned From Monitoring Spanish-Language Vaccine Misinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Erika Bonnevie, Valeria Ricciulli, Megan Fields, Ruth O’Neill, 2023
PGP Monitoring Lab
New York CityPGP’s Monitoring Lab employs several commercially available media monitoring systems that collect and organize publicly available information sources.
Global Engagement Center
Washington, DCMission: To direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.
FEMA Hurricane Rumor Response
Washington, DCThe US government's emergency response department has taken to the internet to fight an unprecedented amount of information about 2024 hurricanes.
Rhetorical Labs
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)We are a research collective dedicated to providing public communication campaigns with rigorous, state-of-the-art tools for message development. Our methodology combines machine learning, crowdsourcing, and adaptive randomized controlled trials.
An open database of conversations ChatGPT had with people who believe in a variety of conspiracy theories, which can be filtered by the efficacy of the conversation in changing beliefs.
Skeptic Reader
Spain (España)Your personal bullshit🤌 detector for the Internet.
Gali Fakta
IndianaA new kind of media literacy game specifically tailored for an Indonesian audience.
Microsoft's program to "preserve, protect, and advance the fundamentals of democracy by safeguarding open and secure democratic processes, promoting a healthy information ecosystem, and advocating for corporate civic responsibility."
有据 (China Fact Check)
China (Zhong Guo)China's first independent fact-checker, verifying international news
Weibo Community Notes feature (社区“附注”功能上)
China (Zhong Guo)Like X and YouTube, China's Weibo platform instituted community notes annotations to fight disinformation on the platform.
Misinformation Combat Alliance
India (Bhārat)The Misinformation Combat Alliance is a cross-industry alliance bringing companies, organizations, institutions, industry associations and government entities together to combat misinformation and fake news and create an enlightened and informed society.
Digital Community Stewards Online Course
Brussels, BelgiumA training program for digital community stewards (online group moderators and admins) focused on building social cohesion in online communities, and creating inclusive, engaging, and safe digital experiences within their online groups.
Hashtag Generation
Colombo, Sri LankaHashtag Generation is a non profit organization and movement led and run by a group of young tech-savvy, socially conscious Sri Lankans advocating for the meaningful civic and political participation of youth, especially young women and young people from minority groups
BridgeBot
GlobalMeet BridgeBot, a new chatbot which helps social media users bridge differences and build trust and understanding online.
Get the Trolls Out
EuropeA campaign that harnesses the power of social media to disseminate innovative media outputs and generate dialogue in order to deliver a powerful counter-narrative against diverse forms of hate speech, including antisemitism, anti-Muslim hate, anti-Christian sentiment.
The Project AISLE
Batticaloa, Sri LankaProject AISLE is a hate speech monitoring tool in Tamil and Sinhala developed using Artificial Intelligence.
The Impact and Opportunities of Generative AI in Fact-Checking
Washington state, USAPaper by ROBERT WOLFE and TANUSHREE MITRA, University of Washington, United States
Democracy Capital
OregonAdvising, Educating, Investing and Partnering in solutions that promote ecosystems we can trust…through information integrity, quality, and transparency (IQT)
Guidance for Policymakers, Civil Society, and Development Cooperation
Alliance4Europe is operating an information sharing and analysis centre (ISAC), to identify and defend against disinformation threats and to enable scalable collaboration with those who want to defend democracy.
The Internet & Democracy Initiative will study problems that have widespread information and social media implications.
the EU’s largest interdisciplinary network to counter disinformation.
Tech company signatories of the voluntary EU Code of Practice on Disinformation report relevant data on disinformation on their platforms
ElectoFacts
CanadaElectoFacts is a resource that Canadian electors can use to easily check whether information they come across about Canada's federal electoral process is true or not.
Turning Wikimedia into a news-site credibility tool
United States of America (the)My new WikiCred project is aimed at making Wikidata/Wikipedia a more effective indicator of news-site credibility.
The ComProp Navigator
University of Oxford, 1 St Giles', Oxford OX1 3JS, UKThis is an online resource guide for civil society groups looking to better deal with the problem of disinformation.
Facts and Fakes in video
Russian Federation (the)Fact-checking video for Youtube and Rutube: displaying references to refutations, proofs and disputs of the facts contained in the video, as well as the video rating of the video and the overall channel rating.
LupaMundi
Brazil (Brasil)O LupaMundi - Mapa das Legislações sobre Desinformação é um mapa interativo que apresenta as leis nacionais de combate à desinformação.
Say No to Disinfo
LondonSay No To Disinfo mines peer-reviewed empirical studies for insight on the most effective way to combat any information threat.
Foundation The London Story
India (Bhārat)Diaspora monitoring disinformation and hate speech in India and advocating for human rights.
Mercenários Digitais
South AmericaBrasil: Investigação transnacional revela empresas de marketing político ligadas à extrema direita
Encrypted Messaging Applications and Political Messaging: How They Work and Why Understanding Them is Important for Combating Global Disinformation
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USAThis report provides an overview of how various EMAs work, a review of popular EMAs and their notable features (LINE, Signal, Telegram, Viber, WhatsApp, and WeChat), and examples of how EMAs have been used for political manipulation
#teyitpedia
Turkey (Turkiye)dijitalde eleştirel düşünme becerileri kazandıran, yanlış bilgi sorununa dikkat çeken, teyitçi gibi düşünmeye katkı sağlayan yazılardan oluşur.
Metamorphosis Foundation
Skopje, North MacedoniaMetamorphosis Foundation works on strengthening the awareness and capacity of citizens and civil society to assume their fullest possible role as activists for democracy, while supporting government to fulfill its democratic role in serving society.
A game to arm people against disinformation
The EMIF is entrusted with an objective of public interest to support fact-checking and media literacy initiatives, as well as fundamental research projects, with a view to addressing the phenomenon of online disinformation in Europe and promoting a more resilient and fact-based digital information ecosystem.
ERSILIA
Paris, FranceErsilia Est Une Plateforme Collaborative D’éducation À L’image
EUfactcheck.eu
MechelenEUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights misinformation about European policies and topics. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims made by politicians and others and rate them.
NETTZ
BerlinHate speech on the internet has regrettably become an increasingly pressing social issue. The NETTZ network aims to confront the current trend by supporting moral courage on digital media as well as cultivating a positive debate and opinion culture on the web.
Propastop
Estonia (Eesti Vabariik)Propastop is a blog aimed at cleaning Estonia from propaganda, false information and media lie. The blog is run by volunteers.
A standalone product for users to query the veracity of text- and image-based claims
Get email updates
Helpful Links
Reach Out
A project of
With support from
National Endowment for Democracy
Founding Organization
Civic Hall
Technology partner
Civic Tech Field Guide