Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldThe Tech > Media > Fight disinformation - (418)
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 418 Results
Mnemonic is an NGO dedicated to archiving, investigating and memorializing digital information documenting human rights violations and international crimes.
BOOM
MumbaiBOOM is an independent digital journalism initiative. We are India’s premier fact checking website, committed to bring to our readers verified facts rather than opinion. When there is a claim, we will fact check it.
Credibility Coalition
San FranciscoThe Credibility Coalition brings people together to develop common standards for information credibility.
The index compiles news sites with low factual-reporting levels, as determined and documented by Media Bias/Fact Check.
NCRI has built its own proprietary platform that has played a critical role in the identification and forecasting of emerging threats that threaten the Economic, physical and social health of civil society.
Information Resistance
Ukraine (Ukrayina)Information Resistance is a non-governmental project whose main task is to counteract in the information field external threats arising for Ukraine in the main areas: military, economic and energy, as well as in information security.
Fact Crescendo
Crescendo Transcription Pvt Ltd, STPI, # 23, 24, 25 & 26, 2nd Floor, Naregaon Main Rd, MIDC Industrial Area, Chilkalthana, Aurangabad, Maharashtra 431201 IndiaFact Crescendo is an independent, unbiased fact-checking website that is committed to bringing the fact behind every news, debunking mis-interpreted & hoax news on a daily basis on false, mis-informed, social media as well as mainstream media.
Data Analytics for Social Media Monitoring
Washington, DCThis new guide is designed to help democracy practitioners better understand social media trends, content, data, and networks.
Dubawa
NigeriaDUBAWA is Nigeria’s independent verification and fact-checking platform, initiated by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) and supported by the most influential newsrooms and civic organisations in the country to help amplify the culture of truth in public discourse, public policy, and media practice.
InformNapalm
Ukraine (Ukrayina)InformNapalm is a volunteer initiative emerged as a response to the Russian aggression in Ukraine in March 2014.
Protecting Tunisian Elections from Digital Threat Roundtable
Tunisia (Tunis)The roundtable highlights the current state of social media used by political actors ahead of the elections, seeking to understand and foresight how social media will impact the political campaign, and how to better protect the integrity of the campaign.
Reliability and Multilingual Global Communities
PUSAD
IndonesiaPUSAD is a center for research on religion and democracy, they conduct research on hate speech and political disinformation.
Radar
Brazil (Brasil)Radar is a project which uses a combination of algorithms and manual research to find posts related to three themes over a wide variety of social media platforms in Brazil.
Be Internet Awesome
Mountain View, CA, USAGoogle's digital media literacy training for kids
The Citizen Helpdesks are a pioneering citizen feedback, dialogue and community voice platform to ensure accountability in the development process.
A user guide for civil society organizations and researchers to assess the vulnerability of a country’s electoral integrity to online manipulation.
Digit Eye
India (Bhārat)Digiteye India is an independent digital news fact-checking venture by a small group of veteran journalists who came together to bring forth authentic facts behind daily news and claims being passed on as news, social media messages and views.
PubliElectoral
Buenos Aires, ArgentinaPubliElectoral is a technological tool of social interest that allows the collection of information related to electoral advertising on social networks without affecting the privacy of citizen users.
Polétika República Dominicana
C. Josefa Perdomo 160 Santo Domingo, Dominican RepublicPolétika República Dominicana is a group of civil society organizations and movements that work in different areas, including: health, housing and habitat, taxation, citizen security, transparency, childhood and adolescence, gender, and municipality.
The African Fact-Checking Alliance (AFCA) is a network of media and civil society organizations that work to counter misinformation. The network supports fact-checking missions to debunk dangerous content, including conspiracy theories and misinformation.
"The Hypothesis Project is a new effort to implement an old idea: A conversation layer over the entire web that works everywhere, without needing implementation by any underlying site."
Permanent International Media Monitoring Mission on Disinformation about Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora
Ukraine (Ukrayina)NGO "Ukraine-2050" is a working to counter disinformation through a media monitoring program.
Pegabot
ITS Rio - Rua da Assembléia - Centro, Rio de Janeiro - State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazila tool that brings more transparency to the use of bots in Brazil.
Republic of Georgia's “Ethical Principles of Candidates of 28 October 2018 Presidential Elections”
Georgia (Sakartvelo)The purpose of the “Ethical Principles of Candidates of 28 October 2018 Presidential Elections” was to establish guidelines for presidential candidates during their election campaigns.
The Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) at the University of Washington's Information School explores the role of digital technologies in building more open, inclusive, and equitable societies.
Countering Misinformation about Armenia
Armenia (Hayastán)Monitoring of the selected talk shows, newspapers, electronic periodicals of both Russian and Armenian mass media to examine the media coverage, the possible labelling and targeted information conveyed to wide audiences in the result of the activity of Russian and Armenian news and information periodicals, TV talk shows and websites.
Agência Lupa
Brazil (Brasil)The Magnifier is the first news agency in Brazil to specialize in journalistic technique known worldwide as fact-checking and was founded on November 1, 2015.
Open & Disclose
South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)Open & Disclose aims to provide a platform for media organisations, journalists, columnists, and commentators to make public their interests, with the aim of strengthening institutional credibility, accountability, transparency, and trustworthiness.
"A grant from the Knight Foundation to PBS News Hour, the Newstracker project has tasked itself with "developing a tool that combines online news content with engagement data from social media and other sources to help journalists and others better understand the scale, scope and shape of the misinformation problem." - Counteringdisinformation.org
NewseumED.org offers free resources to cultivate the First Amendment and media literacy skills essential to civic life.
"Sponsored partly by Microsoft, Newsguard is a plugin for browsers such as Chrome, Mozilla, and Microsoft's Edge that validates news websites for users based on 9 journalistic integrity criteria." - Counteringdisinformation.org
Newscheck
India (Bhārat)Strengthening our resolve to support the fight against misinformation in India, Internews is delighted to announce that in partnership with DataLEADS and with the support of Google.org, we will be launching a new news literacy project in India aimed at empowering the general public by helping them learn how to critically assess the information they see online and navigate news.
"The News Literacy Project is a national education nonprofit offering nonpartisan, independent programs that teach students how to know what to believe in the digital age." - Counteringdisinformation.org
Helping the Public Navigate a Challenging Media Landscape
Netvizz is a data collection and extraction application that allows researchers to export data in standard file formats from different sections of the Facebook social networking service.
Nepal Fact Check
NepalCenter for Media Research – Nepal (CMR Nepal) is an autonomous, research and policy-oriented, not-for-profit non-governmental policy think tank registered with Nepal Government and Social Welfare Council and is based in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.
Argentina's Ethical Digital Commitment
Buenos Aires"Pledge signed by political parties and technology/social network companies committing to avoiding fake news and mechanisms of disinformation that may affect upcoming elections." - Countering Disinfo
Namibia Fact Check
NamibiaNamibia Fact Check is an impartial initiative that aims to verify public statements and media reports.
Iffy Quotient
University of Michigan, South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, USAThe Iffy Quotient is a metric for how much content from “Iffy” sites has been amplified on Facebook and Twitter.
EU Disinfo Lab
EuropeEU DisinfoLab is an independent non-profit organisation focused on tackling sophisticated disinformation campaigns targeting the EU, its member states, core institutions, and core values.
Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability
Manila, Metro Manila, PhilippinesThe Manilla Principles on Intermediary Liability define various principles for intermediary companies to follow when operating in democratic and authoritarian environments
Linterna Verde
BogotáLinterna Verde do Research on the online public debate based on areas of interest. They seek to make our work accessible, useful and actionable for civil society, the media and government.
Liga Contra el Silencio
ColombiaWe define ourselves as an alliance that involves the media, a central newsroom and a network of freelance collaborators.
The DeepTrust Alliance is a global coalition of stakeholders advancing the fight against digital disinformation and deepfakes.
Fato ou Fake
Brazil (Brasil)Fato ou Fake is a news literacy project that vetted more than 700 pieces of information ahead of the elections.
Latam Chequea
Latin AmericaFaced with the “infodemic”, the spread of rumors and false content, Latin American checkers join forces to share the information we produce and, by joining forces, provide better information to our communities.
Lead Stories is an innovative fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015.
ITS Rio Curricula on Information Issues
ITS Rio - Rua da Assembléia - Centro, Rio de Janeiro - State of Rio de Janeiro, BrazilCourse at Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade do Rio
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