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
A February 2021 report by Polaris, The Soufan Group, and Limbik
Brown Information Futures Lab
Brown UniversityOur lab is where technology, innovation, policy and community meet, one pilot at a time.
Global Disinformation Lab at UT Austin
Austin, TXThe Global DisInformation Lab (GDIL) was established in 2020 at the University of Texas at Austin to encourage collaborative interdisciplinary academic research on the global circulation of misinformation, and disinformation.
Information Futures Lab Fellows Program
Brown UniversityThe Information Futures Fellowship is a novel opportunity for practitioners in public health, healthcare, community organizations, media, policy, design and other fields who are actively working on responses to the ongoing information crisis.
Track the trolls & sock-puppets poisoning our democracies
The African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO) is offering a series of seed grants and additional technical support for targeted research into how both state-affiliated and other lobbyist groups use influence/information operations and disinformation and targeted propaganda to subvert African democracies. The initial research grants focus on four countries: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal.
A.N.C.I.R. Misinfo
AfricaA project investigating the stories and the data behind fake news in Africa
ADDO is a coalition of investigative analysis + forensic research organisations that monitor how digital tools and civic technologies impact on the rights of African citizens
An ongoing series of reports about ad-funded disinformation
Disinformation Pathways and Effects: Case Studies from Five African Countries
Cameroon (Cameroon, Cameroun)Interviews with 90 respondents
Watchdog
Batticaloa, Sri LankaWatchdog is a multidisciplinary team of factcheckers, journalists, researchers and software engineers. We hunt hoaxes and misinformation, investigate matters of public welfare, and build software tools that help operations like ours.
Community Standards (Facebook)
Facebook, Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA, USAEvery day, people use Facebook to share their experiences, connect with friends and family, and build communities.
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.
Credibility Coalition
San FranciscoThe Credibility Coalition brings people together to develop common standards for information credibility.
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
Efecto Cocuyo Chequea
Bolivarian Republic of VenezuelaWe are an independent Venezuelan media, which uses all its platforms for the free exercise of journalism and access to information.
DisinfoWatch
CanadaDisinfoWatch is a Canadian foreign disinformation monitoring and debunking platform.
What’s Crap on WhatsApp?
South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)Podcast dedicated to unpacking the disinfo spreading on Whatsapp
Bolivia Verifica
Bolivia (Buliwya / Wuliwya / Volívia)Bolivia Verifica is a non-profit, non-political digital media that is dedicated to the verification of false news and public discourse to fight against disinformation and improve democratic participation.
VERA Files is a nonstock, nonprofit independent media organization.
This project uses advanced machine learning techniques to detect propaganda accounts on Twitter.
Never before has the need for News Literacy been more urgent.
BotSlayer is an application that helps track and detect potential manipulation of information spreading on Twitter.
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).
The Digital Enquirer Kit is centered around misinformation, fact-based research and digital security.
Initiative for Media Freedom
Philippines (the)The Initiative for Media Freedom (IMF) is a five-year program implemented by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
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.
Masyarakat Anti Fitnah Indonesia
Indonesiacekfakta.com adalah sebuah sebuah proyek kolaboratif pengecekan fakta yang dibangun di atas API Yudistira oleh MAFINDO ( Masyarakat Anti Fitnah Indonesia ) dan bekerja sama dengan beberapa media online yang tergabung di AJI ( Aliansi Jurnalis Independen ) dan AMSI ( Asosiasi Media Siber Indonesia ) serta didukung oleh Google News Initiative dan Internews serta FirstDraft
Lead Stories is an innovative fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015.
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.
EDx course on media literacy. It helps us understand, analyze and create media.
Disinformation campaign map
Washington, DCA map visualizing the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab research on coordinated disinformation campaigns.
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) brings together the technology industry, government, civil society, and academia to foster collaboration and information-sharing to counter terrorist and violent extremist activity online.
Be Internet Awesome
Mountain View, CA, USAGoogle's digital media literacy training for kids
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.
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.
Knowledge and Rights with Young people through Safer Spaces (KRYSS) - deploys a coordinated network of individuals to amplify positive counter-messages on social media to counter online gender-based violence and disinformation.
The mission of MediaWise is to empower people of all ages to be more critical consumers of content online.
Factly
HyderabadFactly strives to cultivate civic participation and engaging citizens in accessing, understanding, and using important government data/information at various levels
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.
Poynter's global guide on existing attempts to legislate against what can broadly be referred to as online misinformation
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.
Ethiopia Check
Ethiopia (Ityop'iya)Ethiopia Check debunks claims and exposes fake news using its platforms on Facebook (52,000 followers), Twitter (7,000 followers) and Telegram (34,000 followers).
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.
OwlFactor automatically calculates the quality of an article based on four factors
Botometer (formerly BotOrNot) checks the activity of a Twitter account and gives it a score based on how likely the account is to be a bot.
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