Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldThe Tech > Media > Fight disinformation - (431)
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 431 Results
Aggie is an open-source social and online media aggregation tool designed specifically for monitoring events in real time.
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.
AFP Fact Check is a global digital verification service that tackles damaging misinformation on topics such as COVID-19 and elections.
The ANCIR iLab uses forensic data science techniques to expose the networks that disseminate and amplify misinformation, disinformation, and toxic content (such as hate speech or extremism) with a special focus on coordinated inauthentic behaviour and other influence/information operations.
AFRICMIL
Abuja, NigeriaAFRICMIL is non-government organisation that focuses on media, information, research, advocacy and training. It aims to promote media and information literacy as a key component in the enhancement of democracy and good governance and the promotion of accountability and orderly society.
Poynter's global guide on existing attempts to legislate against what can broadly be referred to as online misinformation
CongoCheck
Congo (the Democratic Republic of the)Congo Check est un média spécialisé dans la vérification des faits ou factchecking. Congo Check est un projet de l'ASBL/ONG Initiative des fact-chechekers du Congo, IFC.
Communalytic is a computational social science research tool for studying online communities and discourse.
Demtech 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. Let us know your concerns and we will suggest resources, curated by civil society practitioners and the Programme on Democracy and Technology.
Comprova
Brazil (Brasil)Comprova brings together journalists from 28 different Brazilian media companies to identify and explain rumors, fabricated content and manipulation tactics that might influence the 2018 presidential election campaign.
Civil Network OPORA
01021 KyivOne of the leading non-governmental and non-partisan All-Ukrainian organizations for public oversight and advocacy in the field of elections, parliamentarism, education, joint ownership, energy efficiency, local self-government, as well as the comprehensive implementation of the principle of open data.
Code of Conduct: Measures to Address Disinformation Intended to Cause Harm During the Election Period
South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)South Africa’s “Code of Conduct: Measures to Address Disinformation Intended to Cause Harm During the Election Period” (in draft form as of July 2020) is aimed at “every registered party and every candidate” with additional obligations under the code for how those parties and candidates must take appropriate recourse against any member, representative or supporter of that party or candidate who behaves in violation of the code.
Civic Signal
AfricaCivicSignal is Code for Africa's AI/machine learning initiative, using large-scale media monitoring to map the content/creator landscape and underlying business models for disinformation profiteers. It uses MIT's Media Cloud software.
Claim Buster
Arlington, Texas"Claim Buster allows for fact checking of individual personal claims or claims by public officials. Users can insert their own claims or links to claims said publically to find out their factuality." - Countering Disinfo
Coalizão para Checagem, Eleições 2020
Brazil (Brasil)TSE coordinated a fact-checking coalition, comprising nine renowned fact-checking organizations from the media, named “Coalizão para Checagem – Eleições 2020” (Fact-Checking Coalition – 2020 Elections).
Voluntary Code of Ethics - India 2019 Election
India (Bhārat)Prior to 2019 elections, the Election Commission of India was able to convene representatives from top social media companies for a two-day brainstorming session on approaches to problematic social media content in elections.
What’s Crap on WhatsApp?
South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)Podcast dedicated to unpacking the disinfo spreading on Whatsapp
Vishvas News
New DelhiVishvas News is an information fact-check and verification portal that is committed to debunking fake news and misinformation in Hindi, English and 10 different Indic languages.
VoxCheck
Ukraine (Ukrayina)Provides fact checking, explainers, and analytical articles, especially on issues of economic reform in Ukraine.
Verify-Sy
Syria, Syrian Arab Republic (Suriyah)Verify-Sy platform is a media platform specialized in examining news and images and verifying information, and Verify-Sy platform seeks to achieve two noble goals: ensuring the citizen's right to obtain accurate and correct information, and contributing as much as possible to improving the performance of the Syrian media and upgrading it by displaying the imbalances that affect it.
VERA Files is a nonstock, nonprofit independent media organization.
Troll Factory
Finland (Suomi)Troll Factory was developed by a team of experts at Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
Faced with the choice between privacy and safety on the Internet, between freely expressing themselves and the ethical use of information, the media and technology – women, men and young boys and girls need new types of competencies.
Tirto.id
IndonesiaTirto.id translates the enlightening vision as the necessity of presenting clear, enlightening, insightful, contextual, deep, investigative, factual, supported by a lot of quantitative and qualitative data. - both secondary and primary, and can be accounted for.
TrolleyBust
Ukraine (Ukrayina)TrolleyBust is a service for tracking and blocking Internet trolls and other sources of anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
TrollBusters is an at-the-ready network of supporters to respond to women journalists’ reports of online harassment by providing positive counterspeech.
Internews’ Thwarting Disinformation and Promoting Quality Information in Haitian Media project will limit the impact of inflammatory rhetoric, false news and disinformation.
The monitoring of mainstream media (TV, radio, newspapers) has become the general norm in Africa. However, social media trends are harder to track and must be taken into account too. Penplusbytes therefore developed what it calls the Social Media Tracking Centre (SMTC).
Social Media Analysis Toolkit (SMAT)
Mozilla, East Evelyn Avenue, Mountain View, CA, USAThe conversations that trend on internet platforms shape our world in consequential ways, from who we vote for, to what news we read, to how we respond to a pandemic.
The Trust Project, a consortium of top news companies led by award-winning journalist Sally Lehrman, is developing transparency standards that help you easily assess the quality and credibility of journalism.
Strengthening information on vaccine safety on Wikipedia
The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation
United States of America (the)The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation cover various aspects of content moderation, developed by legal scholars and technologists based mostly in the United States, targeting social media companies with large use bases.
"Pledge signed by political parties/individuals committing to transparency and preserving election integrity by avoiding disinformation and attacks by third parties." - Counteringdisinformation.org
The Media Manipulation Casebook
Harvard Kennedy School, John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA, USACase studies. The Media Manipulation Casebook is a digital research platform linking together theory, methods, and practice for mapping media manipulation and disinformation campaigns.
The Computational Propaganda Project
University of Oxford, 1 St Giles', Oxford OX1 3JS, UKSince 2012, the Programme on Democracy & Technology has been investigating the use of algorithms, automation, and computational propaganda in public life.
teyit.org
Turkey (Turkiye)teyit.org is working to ensure that internet users can access correct information by verifying in many areas from widely known mistakes, suspicious information on the agenda of social media, claims brought up by the media, or urban legends.
The Citizen Browser Project
New York CityThe Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how the world’s most powerful institutions use technology to reshape society, today announced the development of The Citizen Browser Project—an initiative designed to measure how disinformation travels across social media platforms over time.
Tactical Tech’s Gendersec Training Curricula on “Hacking Hate Speech”
Brunnenstraße 9, 10119 Berlin, GermanyA training workshop curriculum on how to set up an online support network, create textual and visual counterspeech content, and deploy a counterspeech campaign.
Taiwan FactCheck Center
7F, No. 7, Lane 116, Guangfu South Road, Daan District, Taipei City 10694Taiwan’s first fact-checking center was jointly supported by the Taiwan Media Observation Education Foundation and the Quality Journalism Development Association.
Tattle
India (Bhārat)Tattle is a group of technologists, researchers, journalists and artists. We build tools and datasets to better understand and respond to (mis)information trends on chat apps and regional language social media in India.
Suara Masyarakat
MalaysiaSuara Masyarakat (Community Voices) is an Internews Europe project with local Malaysian partners on a 36-month project which aims to strengthen capacity of Malaysian media as the key actor in promoting good governance, transparency and accountability.
Sure and Share Center
Thailand (Prathet Thai)Thai News Agency’s ‘Sure andShare’ project, which encourages audience members to submit questions they have about content, rumours or stories circulating on the messaging app LINE.
StopFake
KyivThe nongovernmental organization Media Reforms Center is an educational platform, founded by Mohyla School of Journalism at National University of ‘KyivMohyla Academy’, which aims to implement high standards of journalism education in Ukraine, raise the level of media literacy, inform about the danger of propaganda and dissemination of fake information in the media.
Putting Civic Online Reason In Civics Class
Stanford, CA, USAThe COR curriculum was developed by the Stanford History Education Group as part of MediaWise—a partnership of SHEG, the Poynter Institute, and the Local Media Association.
South Asia Check
Kathmandu, NepalSouth Asia Check is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit initiative by Panos South Asia which aims to promote accuracy and accountability in public debate.
The overall goal of the project is to safeguard the information integrity around the 2020 Parliamentary and 2021 Municipal elections in Georgia from disinformation, discrediting campaigns and other hostile information operations on social media.
Social Science One
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USASocial Science One implements a new type of partnership between academic researchers and the private sector to advance the goals of social science in understanding and solving society’s greatest challenges.
Siberkreasi
JakartaSiBerkreasi is a national movement to overcome the biggest potential threats that are being faced by Indonesia, namely the spread of negative content through the internet such as hoaxes, cyberbullying and online radicalism.
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