All posts by : Claire Pershan

EU DisinfoLab has chosen to focus this week’s newsletter on Italy’s disinformation landscape and measures to fight it, as the country recently marked one year since the first COVID-19 case.

Yesterday Australia’s Digital Industry Group (DIGI), a body representing several large technology companies, released a voluntary Code of Practice on Misinformation and Disinformation.

A recent investigation by EU DisinfoLab exposes how the website “tierrapura.org” is in fact a partisan and disinformation outlet with links to the Falun Gong, a religious group persecuted by the Chinese Government, spreading content in Spanish and Portuguese languages across both Europe and Latin America.

How disinformation is leveraging the ‘passive’ infrastructure for amplification. Happy Safer Internet Day!

Twitter has launched an Academic Research product track on their new API. Approved applicants will get access to Twitter’s public archive and receive a higher monthly tweet volume cap.

Yesterday we released our latest publication, “The Many Faces Fighting Disinformation: Safeguarding Civil Society’s Role in the Response to Information Disorders”, a panorama of innovative, multidisciplinary actors tackling dis and misinformation.

Facebook shut down a number of accounts of Ugandan government officials before the country’s elections last week for manipulating public debate and use of sock puppets. The Ugandan government ordered service providers to block Internet access hours before voting.

A watershed moment for social media. The riot in the US capital last week led to broad social media deplatforming of the outgoing US president. The event was also a cybersecurity “nightmare scenario”. We reflect on the regulatory significance below.

Last Wednesday, we released our investigation Indian Chronicles, which uncovers a sprawling 15-year influence operation targeting the EU and the UN, leveraging 750+ fake local media and 10+ ‘dead’ NGOs. Our findings have since been reported by the BBC, Politico, Euractiv, AP, Reuters, AlJazeera, and others, – appearing in English, French, Spanish, and German. Here is a snapshot of the coverage:

Last Friday, we published work by our researcher Maria Giovanna Sessa tracking misogynistic disinformation during Covid-19. (more below). Next – *tomorrow* – we will be releasing what is likely our biggest investigation yet!