The Disinformation Tool-Kit

In the past 10 years, the growth of so-called ‘digital media’ has been exponential. We are now flooded by information coming from thousands of different channels of communication: mainstream media, electronic publications, websites, blogs, and, of course, a whole array of social media.

As a result, we are free to choose the source that best reflects our interests and political or social opinions. However, just as social media are increasingly becoming the primary source of information for many, they have also become a minefield through which disinformation travels rapidly.

With news-like formats being easy to reproduce, it is ever more difficult to spot the difference between a genuine article and a hoax. Genuine stories are twisted to push a political agenda, old video footage is used to illustrate recent events, edited photos are published to increase sensationalism of invented stories, armies of trolls and bots are deployed to attack an organisation or a particular public figure; it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish which news is real and which is fake.

Making sense of this new environment is far from simple. The challenge is to identify ‘news’ that can be misleading and prevent its further dissemination.