The nature of the news misinformation problem may be changing. As consumers become more skeptical about the national news they encounter online, impostor local sites that promote ideological agendas are becoming more common. These sites exploit the relatively high trust Americans express in local news outlets — a potential vulnerability […] Read more »
Mimicking Local News, a Network of Michigan Websites Pushes Politics
Despite working for Michigan State University outside Lansing, Mich., Matt Grossmann had never heard of The Lansing Sun until he stumbled across the website on his Facebook news feed earlier this month. So when he clicked on an advertised article about Michigan’s roads spending that criticized the state’s Democratic governor, […] Read more »
Whistleblower Explains How Cambridge Analytica Helped Fuel U.S. ‘Insurgency’
When Christopher Wylie first began working for the British behavioral research company SCL Group, the company used data drawn from a number of sources as a means of potentially altering outcomes for their, sometimes military, clients. But over time, Wylie’s mission — and that of the company — expanded. Conservative […] Read more »
‘Everything You’re Seeing Is Deception’: How Right-Wing Media Talks About Impeachment
… With the president facing an impeachment inquiry, and a whistle-blower report made public Thursday that raised new questions about whether he tried to cover up his efforts to enlist Ukraine’s help in discrediting a political rival, allies of the White House in the pro-Trump media wasted no time constructing […] Read more »
The Global Disinformation Order
Although propaganda has always been a part of political discourse, the deep and wide-ranging scope of these campaigns raise critical public interest concerns. Cyber troops’ are defined as government or political party actors tasked with manipulating public opinion online (Bradshaw and Howard 2017a). We comparatively examine the formal organization of […] Read more »
Russian Twitter propaganda predicted 2016 US election polls
Trump’s poll numbers went up after high levels of Russian troll activity, though Clinton’s didn’t go down. AP/Mary Altaffer, Chuck Burton Damian Ruck, University of Bristol When Robert Mueller completed his long-awaited investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, he left many questions unanswered. But one conclusion was […] Read more »