Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldThe Tech > Media > Fight disinformation - (473)
Disinformation campaigns by states, economic opportunists, and the misinformed themselves threaten to erode the common understandings, shared identities, and empirical bedrock that underlies our collective decisionmaking. While disinformation campaigns have used mass media to spread for many years, social media platforms have proven an exceptionally hospitable environment for the proliferation of falsehoods. Those looking to limit disinformation’s effect on society and bolster truth in media have likewise turned to technology to help keep up with the volume and precision of constantly evolving disinformation campaigns.
Suggested reading:
- Matt Stempeck's research into how the Code for All network has advanced its strategies for fighting disinformation in different contexts around the world (2022)
- Digital Disinformation and Vote Suppression, The Brennan Center for Justice (2020)
- Virus Experts Aren’t Getting the Message Out Renée DiResta in The Atlantic (2020)
- Safeguarding Democracy Against Disinformation Report by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (2020)
- Browser Plug-ins That Spot Fake News Show The Difficulty Of Tackling The ‘Information Apocalypse’ Can software that spots Photoshopped images help stem the tide of misinformation? The Verge (2018)
- Can an AI Fact-Checker Solve India’s Fake News Problem? An Indian startup is using an AI tool to curb misinformation. But India poses unique challenges for the technology. Undark (2019)
- Factchecking, a Quartz Daily Obsession media collage (2019)
- Fake news and fact-checking: 7 studies you should know about, a roundup from Journalist’s Resource (2020)
- The children’s storyteller helping Taiwan sort fact from fiction, a helpful deep dive into disinfo-fighting tech (and misappropriation through national ‘fake news laws’) in Asia. Al Jazeera (2020).
- CivicSpace.tech guide to Disinformation, including its relevance to civic space, opportunities, risks, and case studies (2020)
Showing 473 Results
The Citizen Helpdesks are a pioneering citizen feedback, dialogue and community voice platform to ensure accountability in the development process.
Checkology’s lessons and other resources show you how to navigate today’s challenging information landscape.
Chequea Bolivia
Bolivia (Buliwya / Wuliwya / Volívia) 🇧🇴A fundamental pillar of the democratic system is that there is freedom of expression and dissemination, and that citizens are duly informed to make correct decisions in their daily lives.
Masyarakat Anti Fitnah Indonesia
Indonesia 🇮🇩cekfakta.com adalah sebuah sebuah proyek kolaboratif pengecekan fakta yang dibangun di atas API Yudistira oleh MAFINDO ( Masyarakat Anti Fitnah Indonesia ) dan bekerja sama dengan beberapa media online yang tergabung di AJI ( Aliansi Jurnalis Independen ) dan AMSI ( Asosiasi Media Siber Indonesia ) serta didukung oleh Google News Initiative dan Internews serta FirstDraft
CaptainFact is a collaborative fact-checking tool for YouTube videos.
"Blackbird.AI views the spread of disinformation as one of the world’s largest threats to national security, business, and the public as a whole." - Counteringdisinformation.org
Bolivia Verifica
Bolivia (Buliwya / Wuliwya / Volívia) 🇧🇴Bolivia Verifica is a non-profit, non-political digital media that is dedicated to the verification of false news and public discourse to fight against disinformation and improve democratic participation.
BOOM
MumbaiBOOM is an independent digital journalism initiative. We are India’s premier fact checking website, committed to bring to our readers verified facts rather than opinion. When there is a claim, we will fact check it.
In 2018 we launched Bot Sentinel to help fight disinformation and targeted harassment. We believe Twitter users should be able to engage in healthy online discourse without inauthentic accounts, toxic trolls, foreign countries, and organized groups manipulating the conversation.
Be Internet Awesome
Mountain View, CAGoogle's digital media literacy training for kids
Assessment of Online Risks for the 2021 German Federal Elections
Germany (Deutschland) 🇩🇪A report analyzing the online environment and potential risks for the 2021 German Federal Elections.
Daily, journalists from Aos Fatos follow statements by politicians and authorities of national expression, from different party colors, in order to verify if they are speaking the truth. For this, we adopted a formula with seven steps to carry out our checks.
Annir Initiative
Libya (Libiyah) 🇱🇾Annir is a non-partisan digital initiative specialized in raising awareness about Media & Information Literacy and Digital Safety.
Al Sur
South America"Al Sur" is a consortium of organizations that work in civil society and academia in Latin America and that seek with their joint work to strengthen human rights in the digital environment of the region.
Alternative News Networks
OxfordThis project seeks to understand the health of the UK online information ecosystem, including tracking the spread of divisive and misleading content.
AFRICMIL
AbujaAFRICMIL is non-government organisation that focuses on media, information, research, advocacy and training. It aims to promote media and information literacy as a key component in the enhancement of democracy and good governance and the promotion of accountability and orderly society.
Poynter's global guide on existing attempts to legislate against what can broadly be referred to as online misinformation
CongoCheck
Democratic Republic of the Congo (République Démocratique du Congo) 🇨🇩Congo Check est un média spécialisé dans la vérification des faits ou factchecking. Congo Check est un projet de l'ASBL/ONG Initiative des fact-chechekers du Congo, IFC.
Communalytic is a computational social science research tool for studying online communities and discourse.
Demtech Navigator
University of Oxford, 1 St Giles', Oxford OX1 3JS, UKThis is an online resource guide for civil society groups looking to better deal with the problem of disinformation. Let us know your concerns and we will suggest resources, curated by civil society practitioners and the Programme on Democracy and Technology.
Comprova
Brazil (Brasil) 🇧🇷Comprova brings together journalists from 28 different Brazilian media companies to identify and explain rumors, fabricated content and manipulation tactics that might influence the 2018 presidential election campaign.
Claim Buster
Arlington, Texas"Claim Buster allows for fact checking of individual personal claims or claims by public officials. Users can insert their own claims or links to claims said publically to find out their factuality." - Countering Disinfo
Civil Network OPORA
01021 KyivOne of the leading non-governmental and non-partisan All-Ukrainian organizations for public oversight and advocacy in the field of elections, parliamentarism, education, joint ownership, energy efficiency, local self-government, as well as the comprehensive implementation of the principle of open data.
Coalizão para Checagem, Eleições 2020
Brazil (Brasil) 🇧🇷TSE coordinated a fact-checking coalition, comprising nine renowned fact-checking organizations from the media, named “Coalizão para Checagem – Eleições 2020” (Fact-Checking Coalition – 2020 Elections).
Code of Conduct: Measures to Address Disinformation Intended to Cause Harm During the Election Period
South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika) 🇿🇦South Africa’s “Code of Conduct: Measures to Address Disinformation Intended to Cause Harm During the Election Period” (in draft form as of July 2020) is aimed at “every registered party and every candidate” with additional obligations under the code for how those parties and candidates must take appropriate recourse against any member, representative or supporter of that party or candidate who behaves in violation of the code.
Civic Signal
AfricaCivicSignal is Code for Africa's AI/machine learning initiative, using large-scale media monitoring to map the content/creator landscape and underlying business models for disinformation profiteers. It uses MIT's Media Cloud software.
ZimFact
Zimbabwe 🇿🇼ZimFact is an independent, non-partisan Zimbabwean online fact-checking platform.
Voluntary Code of Ethics - India 2019 Election
India (Bhārat) 🇮🇳Prior to 2019 elections, the Election Commission of India was able to convene representatives from top social media companies for a two-day brainstorming session on approaches to problematic social media content in elections.
What’s Crap on WhatsApp?
South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika) 🇿🇦Podcast dedicated to unpacking the disinfo spreading on Whatsapp
Vishvas News
New DelhiVishvas News is an information fact-check and verification portal that is committed to debunking fake news and misinformation in Hindi, English and 10 different Indic languages.
VoxCheck
Ukraine (Ukrayina) 🇺🇦Provides fact checking, explainers, and analytical articles, especially on issues of economic reform in Ukraine.
Verify-Sy
Syria (Syrian Arab Republic, Suriyah) 🇸🇾Verify-Sy platform is a media platform specialized in examining news and images and verifying information, and Verify-Sy platform seeks to achieve two noble goals: ensuring the citizen's right to obtain accurate and correct information, and contributing as much as possible to improving the performance of the Syrian media and upgrading it by displaying the imbalances that affect it.
VERA Files is a nonstock, nonprofit independent media organization.
Troll Factory
Finland (Suomi) 🇫🇮Troll Factory was developed by a team of experts at Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
Faced with the choice between privacy and safety on the Internet, between freely expressing themselves and the ethical use of information, the media and technology – women, men and young boys and girls need new types of competencies.
Tirto.id
Indonesia 🇮🇩Tirto.id translates the enlightening vision as the necessity of presenting clear, enlightening, insightful, contextual, deep, investigative, factual, supported by a lot of quantitative and qualitative data. - both secondary and primary, and can be accounted for.
TrolleyBust
Ukraine (Ukrayina) 🇺🇦TrolleyBust is a service for tracking and blocking Internet trolls and other sources of anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
TrollBusters is an at-the-ready network of supporters to respond to women journalists’ reports of online harassment by providing positive counterspeech.
Internews’ Thwarting Disinformation and Promoting Quality Information in Haitian Media project will limit the impact of inflammatory rhetoric, false news and disinformation.
The Social Media Tracking Centre
Ghana 🇬🇭The monitoring of mainstream media (TV, radio, newspapers) has become the general norm in Africa. However, social media trends are harder to track and must be taken into account too. Penplusbytes therefore developed what it calls the Social Media Tracking Centre (SMTC).
Social Media Analysis Toolkit (SMAT)
Mozilla, East Evelyn Avenue, Mountain View, CAThe conversations that trend on internet platforms shape our world in consequential ways, from who we vote for, to what news we read, to how we respond to a pandemic.
The Trust Project, a consortium of top news companies led by award-winning journalist Sally Lehrman, is developing transparency standards that help you easily assess the quality and credibility of journalism.
The Vaccine Safety Project
San FranciscoStrengthening information on vaccine safety on Wikipedia
The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation
United States of America 🇺🇸The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation cover various aspects of content moderation, developed by legal scholars and technologists based mostly in the United States, targeting social media companies with large use bases.
"Pledge signed by political parties/individuals committing to transparency and preserving election integrity by avoiding disinformation and attacks by third parties." - Counteringdisinformation.org
The Media Manipulation Casebook
Harvard Kennedy School, John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MACase studies. The Media Manipulation Casebook is a digital research platform linking together theory, methods, and practice for mapping media manipulation and disinformation campaigns.
The Citizen Browser Project
New York City (NYC / New York, NY)The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how the world’s most powerful institutions use technology to reshape society, today announced the development of The Citizen Browser Project—an initiative designed to measure how disinformation travels across social media platforms over time.
The Computational Propaganda Project
University of Oxford, 1 St Giles', Oxford OX1 3JS, UKSince 2012, the Programme on Democracy & Technology has been investigating the use of algorithms, automation, and computational propaganda in public life.
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