Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldThe Tech > Media > Fight disinformation - (398)
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 398 Results
A report analyzing how gendered, online harassment of female journalists translates in the physical world.
Leading up to and following the Kenyan election on August 9 2022, the Sentinel Project is expanding its previous work in the area, from Una Hakika to 15 of Kenya's highest risk counties.
Verify-Sy
Syrian Arab RepublicVerify-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.
Ethiopia Check
EthiopiaEthiopia Check debunks claims and exposes fake news using its platforms on Facebook (52,000 followers), Twitter (7,000 followers) and Telegram (34,000 followers).
Poynter's global guide on existing attempts to legislate against what can broadly be referred to as online misinformation. This guide seeks to create an inclusive, collaborative approach to addressing misinformation around the world. While not every law contained here relates to misinformation specifically, they’ve all often been wrapped into that broader discussion. Article will be updated on an ongoing basis.
TrollBusters is an at-the-ready network of supporters to respond to women journalists’ reports of online harassment by providing positive counterspeech.
Memo 98 is a specialist media monitoring organization, with extensive experience of delivery media analyses on behalf of international institutions as well as technical assistance to civil society groups.
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.
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.
Detektor Media
UkraineMedia Detector is a non-governmental organization established by Ukrainian journalists in January 2004.
News Integrity Initiative
CUNY Graduate CenterThe News Integrity Initative is a global consortium focused on helping people make informed judgments about the news they read and share online.
"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 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.
A training workshop curriculum on how to set up an online support network, create textual and visual counterspeech content, and deploy a counterspeech campaign.
Ecuador Chequea
Quito, EcuadorData enriches public debate and therefore strengthens democracy. An informed society is capable of making conscious decisions.
Fakey
IndianaThis game aims to teach media literacy and study how people interact with misinformation.
IREX’s Learn to Discern approach helps citizens recognize and resist disinformation, propaganda, and hate speech.
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.
Our mission is to ensure that information technology and social media play a proactive role in supporting democracy and human rights globally.
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.
Detector de Mentiras
ColombiaLa Silla Vacía is an informative and interactive medium for people interested in current Colombian politics.
Rooted in Trust is a pandemic information response plan countering the unprecedented scale and speed of the spread of rumors and misinformation about COVID-19. Operating in ten countries.
Never before has the need for News Literacy been more urgent.
Within the disinformation and memory studies direction, the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) team is developing tools in several ways.
RESIST Counter Disinformation Toolkit
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)UK government toolkit to help support the dissemination of reliable, truthful information that underpins our democracy.
The Digital Enquirer Kit is centered around misinformation, fact-based research and digital security.
First Draft News resources
Columbia University, New York, NY, USAThese online courses, toolkits and resources are designed to help both journalists and the public build expertise and stay one step ahead of misinformation.
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.
Raskrinkavanje
Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina / Босна и Херцеговина)The Raskrinkavanje.ba platform was launched by the team of the "Why Not" organization, which has many years of experience in fact-checking, through work on checking the accuracy and consistency of statements of public officials, and monitoring the fulfillment of election promises on the Istinomjer platform.
Real 411
South AfricaReal411 was created to give all citizens the power to report digital disinformation during the run up to the 2019 South African National and Provincial Elections.
Pressland is a first-of-its-kind data-intelligence platform that maps global media production in real time.
Aggie is an open-source social and online media aggregation tool designed specifically for monitoring events in real time.
Checkology’s lessons and other resources show you how to navigate today’s challenging information landscape.
The Digital Polarization Initiative, or “DigiPo”, is ADP's national effort to build student civic, information and web literacy by having students participate in a broad, cross-institutional project to fact-check, annotate, and provide context to the different news stories that show up in our Twitter and Facebook feeds.
PBS youth media literacy effort. "This is a pilot – a test – with Ruff Ruffman videos looking at the red-hot topic of how kids can and should use media and technology."
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.
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.
The Disinfo Defense League Policy Platform is a series of legislative, executive, and international recommendations addressing disinformation.
Social Media Hoax Slayer
Mumbai, Maharashtra, IndiaIn the last few years, the Social Media having a wider reach and faster, started polluting human minds by anti-social elements, wrong doers, pranksters etc.
Provides a framework for NDI's DemTech team to lead and support institutional initiatives countering disinformation and other forms of online manipulation, while strengthening and ensuring the integrity of the information space.
Observatorio Venezolano de Fake News
Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)The Venezuelan Fake News Observatory aims to educate and empower citizens in the face of a reality that is submerged daily in the misinformation produced, among other reasons, by the almost immediate viralization of falsified information that circulates, mainly, on social networks.
The Citizen Helpdesks are a pioneering citizen feedback, dialogue and community voice platform to ensure accountability in the development process.
AFP Fact Check is a global digital verification service that tackles damaging misinformation on topics such as COVID-19 and elections.
The European Union developed a Code of Practice on Disinformation based on the findings of its High Level Working Group on the issue.
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