Just 3 staffers remain at the Observatory, who will either leave or find roles at #Stanford’s #Cyber#Policy Center, which is absorbing what remains of the program, acc/to 8 people familiar w/the developments.
The #ElectionIntegrity Partnership, a prominent consortium run by the Observatory & a University of Washington team to identify #ViralFalsehoods about #election procedures & outcomes in real time, has updated its webpage to say its work has concluded. #law#CyberSecurity#disinformation
It follows Harvard’s dismissal of #misinformation expert #JoanDonovan. A Dec whistleblower complaint alleged she used the university’s close & lucrative ties w/ #Facebook parent #Meta led the university to clamp down on her work, which was highly critical of the #socialmedia giant’s practices.
“The #Stanford#Internet Observatory has played a critical role in understanding a range of #digital harms,” said Kate Starbird, who led the University of Washington’s work on the Partnership & continues to publish on #election#misinformation.
Starbird said that while most #academic studies of #online#manipulation look backward from much later, the Observatory’s “rapid analysis” helped people around the world understand what they were seeing on #platforms as it happened.
Brown University professor Claire Wardle said the #Internet Observatory had created innovative methodology & trained the next generation of #disinformation experts.
“Closing down a lab like this would always be a huge loss, but doing so now, during a year of #global#elections, makes absolutely no sense … We need universities to use their resources & standing in the community to stand up to criticism & headlines,” said Wardle, who led #research at anti- #misinformation nonprofit First Draft.
#Stanford University spox Dee Mostofi said in a statement that much of the Observatory work was continuing under new leadership….
“Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including #lawsuits & #congressional investigations, that chill #freedom of #inquiry & undermine legitimate & much needed #academic#research — both at Stanford & across #academia,” Mostofi added.
So this is making the rounds on #Shitter, trying to paint democracy as the cause of fascism. Does anyone know the source and origin of this clip or who the speaker is? Dan somebody?
#LocalNews channels across the country used a nearly identical script to push coverage of a controversial @WSJ article questioning President Joe #Biden’s mental fitness.
Here is the supercut by #PopularInformation@juddlegum] in 2 parts. It gets old fast, remarkably it’s a full 6 minutes of #LocalNews anchors across the country saying the same thing.
#POTUS, who at 81 is decades younger than the vets he honored during Thurs’s D-Day commemoration, nonetheless found his age & fitness in the spotlight as selectively #edited clips of him circulated online.
D-Day’s 80th quickly became the latest example of the fast spread of #manipulated videos, highlighting the use of #misinformation [#disinformation ] & #ConspiracyTheories in politics.
Disinformation Debunked: Building Resilience Through Media and Information Literacy by Divina Frau-Meigs & Nicoleta Corbu, 2024
Offering a comparative study of 4 European national experiences (France, Romania, Spain, and Sweden), the authors also make public policy recommendations to improve the fight against disinformation.
It dovetails w/ warnings from #France that the Olympic Games face an “unprecedented level of #threat” this year in #cyberspace & decades of Russian cyber aggression against the #Olympics amid conflict w/the IOC.
And the network of Russians seeking to deter potential spectators might just be getting started, #Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center said.
Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind by Annalee Newitz, 2024
In Stories Are Weapons, best-selling author Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats―the essential tool kit for psychological warfare―have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars.
The federal #government is facing a dwindling window to #regulate the use of #ArtificialIntelligence in campaigns before the #2024election. The #FCC chair announced a plan last month to require #politicians to disclose #AI use in TV & radio #ads. But the prop is facing opposition from a #FEC top ofcl, which has been considering its own new rules on AI campaign use.
A 2nd #Trump admin could #weaponize existing government agencies to dismantle democracy itself.
This article is part of “Project 2025: The Plot Against #America,” a Nation special issue devoted to unpacking the right’s vast & chilling program for a 2nd Trump term.
In the section on the #DHS …there’s a plan to eliminate the ability of the agency that monitors #ElectionSecurity to prevent the spread of #disinformation about voting & #vote counting.
…Think back to Nov 2020, when #Trump was developing his #BigLie about the #election he’d lost. Trump’s false assertion the election had been characterized by “massive improprieties & fraud” was tripped up by #ChrisKrebs, who served as dir of the #Cybersecurity & Infrastructure #Security Agency (#CISA) in the DHS.
In Mandate’s chapter on the #DHS, Ken Cuccinelli writes, “Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis / #disinformation efforts. … #Project2025 document declares that “the entirety of the #CISA#Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One.”
…This is just one way that Project 2025’s cabal of “experts” is scheming to thwart honest discourse about #elections & #democracy.
Many #Americans do not understand the difference between #abortion pills, which end a pregnancy, & emergency #contraception, which prevents it. Nearly ¾ of Americans incorrectly think that emergency contraceptive pills can end a pregnancy in its early stages, according to a 2023 poll by KFF, a nonprofit focused on national #health issues.
Antiabortion groups are stepping in to fill that knowledge gap w/ #disinformation.