Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldThe Tech > Media > Fight disinformation - (429)
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 429 Results
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
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.
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.
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.
ERSILIA
Paris, FranceErsilia Est Une Plateforme Collaborative D’éducation À L’image
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
GlobalFact 10 Awards
Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 3rd Street South, St. Petersburg, FL, USAWe are excited to invite you to cast your vote for this year's awards, where we celebrate exceptional work in fact-checking.
Over 700 organizations and individuals petitioning Twitter not to revoke free research access to its API
International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE)
Switzerland (Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera)A new, independent global science organization committed to providing actionable scientific knowledge about threats to the world’s information environment
Twitter Brigade
LjubljanaAstroturfing research. We spent the second half of 2020 analysing 24 fake Twitter profiles that published divisive or hostile content and were regularly mentioned or retweeted by Slovenian right-wing politicians.
Danes je nov dan
LjubljanaLjubljana, Slovenia based civic tech NGO, focusing efforts on (digital) political participation, open data, transparency, and public institutional oversight.
Global Fact Check Fund
Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 3rd Street South, St. Petersburg, FL, USAThe Global Fact Check Fund will award grants in an open competition for one or a series of programs to support third-party organizations in strengthening the capabilities of fact-checking organizations across the world.
In this course, you will learn how stories and narratives make disinformation popular and credible and how to counter dangerous beliefs and attitudes.
Pinterest Climate Disinformation Policy
San FranciscoOur new policy makes Pinterest the only major digital platform to have clearly defined guidelines against false or misleading climate change information, including conspiracy theories, across content and ads.
Audible reckoning: How top political podcasters spread unsubstantiated and false claims
Washington, DCBrookings report: Using a combination of analytical methods – including natural language processing, machine learning, and manual classifying – this research provided the first overarching assessment of the role that popular political podcasting plays in spreading unsubstantiated and false claims.
Civic Listening Corps
Washington, DCThe CLC is a volunteer network of individuals trained to monitor for, critically evaluate, and report misinformation on diverse topics central to our civic life: voting, elections, public health, civil rights, and other important issues.
Junkipedia
Washington, DCJunkipedia is designed to centralize the collection of problematic content so that everyone with a stake in solving this problem can benefit from a shared understanding of what threats exist and how to respond to them.
Algorithmic Transparency Institute
Washington, DCThe Algorithmic Transparency Institute builds technology, gathers data, and generates insights to support research, journalism, and advocacy organizations.
Iffy Index of Unreliable Sources
United States of America (the)The goal is to give researchers a more complete, current, and accurate dataset of sites that spread mis/disinformation, which will lead to more accurate disinformation research.
The Starling Lab Journalism Fellowship
CaliforniaThe Starling Lab, a research center anchored at Stanford University’s School of Engineering and the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation, has developed a ground-breaking framework to combat mis/disinformation by tracking the provenance of digital content through the use of open-source tools, best practices and case studies designed to help reduce information uncertainty.
Misinformation exposure scores measure how much the politicians and public organizations you follow tend to lie (based on fact-checking their claims by PolitiFact).
We’re looking beyond fake news to examine how manipulation of narratives, rewriting of history and altering our memories is reshaping our world.
Institute for Rebooting Social Media
Berkman Center For Internet, Everett Street, Cambridge, MA, USAWe are a three-year research initiative addressing social media’s most urgent problems, including misinformation, privacy breaches, harassment, and content governance.
Los Desinformantes
ArgentinaLos desinformantes es una serie de investigaciones sobre diferentes actores que han desinformado durante la pandemia.
An Unrepresentative Democracy: How Disinformation and Online Abuse Hinder Women of Color Political Candidates in the United States
Washington, DCA report by Center for Democracy & Technology
At the Integrity Institute, we are tracking how misinformation performs on platforms to measure the extent to which platforms are amplifying misinformation, and the extent to which they are creating an incentive structure that rewards lies and misinformation online.
The Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust or ARTT is focused on helping people engage in trust-building ways when discussing vaccine efficacy and other topics online.
Disinformation is threatening our ability to get credible facts. Built on our trusted technology stack, Waterbear helps you fight back.
Publi Ou Fake
Brazil (Brasil)Uma cartilha em que trazemos ferramentas para que profissionais da área de marketing e publicidade possam navegar melhor e com mais confiança frente às complexidades da relação entre publicidade e desinformação.
Forum on Information & Democracy
Paris, FranceProviding democratic safeguards to the global communication and information space
WhatsApp archiver
India (Bhārat)The WhatsApp archiver consolidates chat files exported from different WhatsApp conversations into one database
NDI's Google Sheet of guides, trainings, and reports on digital disinformation
Viral Spiral
India (Bhārat)Viral Spiral is an adaptive digital card game about sharing news on the Internet. The game reflects the ways and reasons misinformation is shared, letting players experience first hand the temptation to share fake news for their own gain and face the consequences of the harm it causes around them.
PolétikaRD Chequeos
C. Josefa Perdomo 160 Santo Domingo, Dominican RepublicFact-checking in the Dominican Republic
Kosh
India (Bhārat)Archive containing content scraped from all the different sources- the Tattle Jod telegram bot, Fact-checking sites, social media and chat apps.
factchecking-sites-scraper
India (Bhārat)One of Tattle's goals is to make stories fact-checking content circulated on chat apps and social media more accessible to mobile first users
Desgrabador
ArgentinaVoy a extraer por vos los subtítulos generados automáticamente por Youtube.
Media Matters for Democracy Courses
PakistanTwo courses - Understanding Citizen Journalism and Digital Disinformation and Journalistic Responsibilities
Chequeador
ArgentinaEl Chequeador es una plataforma educativa diseñada por el equipo de Chequeado para el desarrollo de cursos virtuales sobre Alfabetización Mediática e Informacional, desinformación, fact checking y otros temas relacionados.
Chequeo Colectivo
ArgentinaEs una plataforma abierta para verificar contenidos a pedido de la comunidad.
Digital democracy: analysis of the disinformation ecosystems on Telegram during the 2022 Brazilian electoral process
Brazil (Brasil)Understand the role of the Telegram app in the dissemination of disinformation among Brazilian far-right groups and Analyse (online) radicalization process and (offline) political violence against democratic institutions, especially the Brazilian presidential election in October 2022
WhatsApp Third Party Fact-Checkers
San FranciscoEnd-to-end fact-checking on the WhatsApp Business API organized by Meedan
Logically
LondonLogically works to tackle the individual, institutional, and societal harms caused by misleading and deceptive online discourse.
Profiles 82 tools for fighting disinfo
Wikirumours
CanadaWikiRumours is a web-based database which enables geographically distributed teams to collaborate asynchronously on monitoring, verifying, and countering the spread of harmful rumours and misinformation.
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Civic Tech Field Guide