By Susan Abbott We are living in an era where democracy, truth, and trust are under increasing pressure—and the tools we use to protect them must evolve accordingly. The European Media and Information Fund (EMIF)-funded DISINFTRUST pilot project, implemented by Newtral, Blanquerna School of Communication, and Cardiff University, represents a compelling and timely response to this challenge….
In a new journal article, Anya Schiffrin discusses how AI is used to combat mis- and disinformation. The article published in Tech Policy Press breaks down some of the findings of a recent report by Anya Schiffrin and her graduate students for the German Marshall Fund on the AI start-up scene. Based on interviews with 20 AI start-ups, she explains how…
Courtney Radsch examines the weaponization of state-aligned information operations and online harassment, their gendered dimension and AI’s role, in a new report for OSCE. The report, entitled Artificial Intelligence and Disinformation: State-Aligned Information Operations and the Distortion of the Public Sphere, analyses the dynamics of state-aligned disinformation campaigns and the role that AI plays in this context, with…
CMDS Advisory Board member Anya Schiffrin and Peter Cunliffe-Jones survey some of the fixes tried for dis- and misinformation in the Global South in a chapter in the new book Disinformation in the Global South. The volume, edited by Herman Wasserman and Dani Madrid-Morales, has been published by Wiley-Blackwell. It offers a geographically diverse collection of perspectives on the phenomenon of…
Mainstream media outlets dominate the misinformation landscape in Serbia where small websites cannot compete with “misinformation giants” like the tabloid newspaper Blic. In neighboring Bosnia & Herzegovina, mainstream media, mostly “anonymous, for-profit websites offering no true journalistic value,” are also the main sources of misinformation, according to the report. The mainstream media in Hungary are…
One would assume that people who run misinformation websites would try to hide their true identity due to the perceived amorality of this business. That is not the case in Serbia. The country’s misinformation landscape is dominated by established, out-in-the-open websites rather than anonymous, for-profit misinformation websites that have mushroomed, for example, in Bosnia and Herzegovina….
Some 85% of Moldovans believe that the news they read are politically biased and published to manipulate the public; a total of 56% of them are not satisfied with mass media in their country, according to a study published by Internews in November 2018. It is not surprising then that Moldovans turn to social media to inform…
A random click on an article about how neo-Marxists hate Christianity on an ultra-nationalist, xenophobic Romanian media outlet immediately displays a banner with news on the fight against the traditional family waged by George Soros, a financier and philanthropist who became the hate figure for the far-right; as well as on the dangers of chlorine-treated…
Before the Slovak presidential elections last March, the website Zem a Vek published an edited picture featuring Zuzana Čaputová, later elected the country’s president, with a hooked nose and bigger lips, clearly an attempt to make her look more Jewish, as stereotypes go. The picture was taken from the DennikN, a Slovak news portal, and…
We reviewed over 100 misinformation websites to understand their business model In early June 2019, Hungarian website Tv2-friss.com published a series of articles about the sinking of a sightseeing boat on the Danube that killed 28 people just days before. The portal cited the local businessman Lőrinc Mészáros as saying that Hungary’s prime minister Viktor…