Publications

As the infodemic captures the world, old and new conspiracy theories find a way to take over the public debate. Thanks to our monitoring of independently fact-checked disinformation from France, Italy, and Spain, we have noticed that similar patterns are emerging regarding the types of conspiracy theories deliberately related to COVID-19.

In this short piece, we traced back the diffusion and content moderation timeline of a 5G conspiracy video across several social media platforms.

As the virus swept across the world, we decided to zoom into the narratives defining what the WHO term as “the infodemic”. Based on our monitoring of independently fact-checked disinformation from France, Italy, and Spain, we have been able to draw trends from the content, such as the strategies and platforms used to disinform.

In autumn 2019, we began to look into two disinformation websites, Africa24.info and 24jours.com, which were regularly flagged by some fact-checkers as outlets that spread disinformation.

We uncovered a network around linfonational.net, which impersonated politicians on Facebook to amplify disinformation in France. Our investigation shows just how easy it is to use Facebook’s features to manage a disinformation network using political content.

by Raquel Miguel Voter suppression in the November 2019 Spanish general election Recent investigations conducted by El País and eldiario.es (articles in Spanish) revealed voter suppression campaigns that had been active before the official start of the campaign on 1st November.