Latest in Disinformation
Heading into Tuesday, there was a very long list of things that could go wrong. Many have not come to pass so far.
The past four years have seen extraordinary growth in the study of foreign influence and social media manipulation. Over the next four years, the field will need to move toward sustainability and equitability.
Authoritarians’ use of influence operations must be understood as part of a larger strategy to reshape the information space into one that is less democratic and more friendly to despots.
The continued focus on Russia, at the expense of domestic threats, is significant and dangerous.
The evidence that there are Russian information operations aimed at the United States is overwhelming. But there is no publicly available evidence that establishes that these operations have made any difference worth caring about.
Introducing a series from the Stanford Internet Observatory on assessing the threat of foreign influence operations targeting the United States.
Information operations are sometimes sensationalized and overhyped by politicians and others to distract and confuse the public for their own political ends—but the threat persists and must be taken seriously.
A review of Thomas Rid’s “Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2020)
Over the course of two short days, figures affiliated with the GOP published three different deceptively edited videos on social media. Platforms can’t handle the challenge alone.
Social media presents potential pitfalls that the intelligence community should seek to avoid.