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)