The Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) is a multidisciplinary program for the study of abuse in information technologies, with a focus on social media, established in 2019. It is part of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, a joint initiative of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School. [1]
According to Lauren Coffey of Inside Higher Ed, by 2024 the Stanford Internet Observatory had "published 15 white paper reports, 10 journal articles and garnered more than 5,000 media mentions". [2]
The SIO was the first to out Russian support for Trump online in 2016, [3] [4] raised China spying concerns around the Clubhouse app in a 2021 report, [5] partnered with the Wall Street Journal in a 2023 report on Instagram and online child sexual abuse materials, [6] and developed a curriculum for teaching college students how to handle trust and safety issues on social media platforms. [7]
The Stanford Internet Observatory participated in pre-2020 election research focusing on misinformation about election processes and procedures, resulting in a 2021 report that concluded "The 2020 election demonstrated that actors—both foreign and domestic—remain committed to weaponizing viral false and misleading narratives to undermine confidence in the US electoral system and erode Americans’ faith in our democracy". [8]
SIO co-founded the Election Integrity Partnership along with the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public to identify real-time viral falsehoods about election procedures and outcomes. The partnership worked the 2020 and 2022 election cycles and has since concluded their work. [9] [2]
In 2021, SIO launched the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, an open access peer-reviewed journal covering research on how consumer internet services are abused to cause harm and how to prevent those harms. [7] [10]
Praised as "the gold-standard organization for determining the veracity of political information circulating online" by Thom Hartmann of The New Republic. [3]
In 2024, Lauren Coffey of Inside Higher Ed wrote that SIO "served as a research powerhouse with a focus on social media amid growing misinformation". [2]
Joseph Menn of The Washington Post wrote "The Stanford Internet Observatory [...] published some of the most influential analysis of the spread of false information on social media during elections." [7]
Disinformation research groups, including the Stanford Internet Observatory, having reported on such topics as the 2020 stolen election claims and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, had been under attack by GOP resources accusing them of colluding with the US Government and social media outlets of censoring conservative voices. The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Stanford University for any records or emails with government officials and social media platforms. In May 2023, America First Legal sued SIO and other researchers in Louisiana, aiming to bring down the "censorship-industrial complex". A Texas lawsuit filed by anti-vaccine advocates alleged their social media posts were flagged or removed in what it called mass censorship. [11] [4] [12]
These legal cases have cost Stanford millions of dollars in legal expenses and have distracted researchers from their work. A Stanford spokesperson said: "Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research — both at Stanford and across academia." [9]
In June 2024, the Stanford Internet Observatory cut several jobs and several news outlets reported on its dismantling. [7] [13] [14] [9] Leadership including Alex Stamos, the main fundraiser, had left in November 2023 citing the toll of the political pressure while Renée DiResta's contract was not renewed in June 2024. [13] The SIO's closure would mark a significant setback for misinformation researchers. Conservative lawmakers had also threatened to cut federal funding to any universities that study propaganda, while the Washington Post theorized the university also might not want to alienate conservative donors. [7] The New Republic critiqued the Republican efforts as an attempt to prevent fact-checking of GOP lies. [3]
In a statement to Platformer on June 13, Stanford denied that SIO was being dismantled:
The important work of SIO continues under new leadership... Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research – both at Stanford and across academia. [13]
On June 18, the school said it was not shutting down the project but said that its founding grants were running out and they were seeking new funding. [15]
Some SIO work has more concrete plans to continue under new leadership at Stanford, including work on child safety, The Journal of Online Trust and Safety and the Trust and Safety Research Conference will continue. [7] [13]
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic deceptions and media manipulation tactics to advance political, military, or commercial goals. Disinformation is implemented through attacks that "weaponize multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value judgements—to exploit and amplify culture wars and other identity-driven controversies."
Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such checking done in-house by the publisher to prevent inaccurate content from being published; when the text is analyzed by a third party, the process is called external fact-checking.
Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation can exist without specific malicious intent; disinformation is distinct in that it is deliberately deceptive and propagated. Misinformation can include inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or false information as well as selective or half-truths.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), formerly Brixton Endeavors, is a British not-for-profit NGO company with offices in London and Washington, D.C. with the stated purpose of stopping the spread of online hate speech and disinformation. It campaigns to deplatform people that it believes promote hate or misinformation, and campaigns to restrict media organisations such as The Daily Wire from advertising. CCDH is a member of the Stop Hate For Profit coalition.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a political advocacy organization founded in 2006 by Sasha Havlicek and George Weidenfeld and headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
A troll farm or troll factory is an institutionalised group of internet trolls that seeks to interfere in political opinions and decision-making.
Fake news or information disorder is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Although false news has always been spread throughout history, the term fake news was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. Nevertheless, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information presented as news. It has also been used by high-profile people to apply to any news unfavorable to them. Further, disinformation involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term.
Occupy Democrats is an American left-wing media outlet built around a Facebook page and corresponding website. Established in 2012, it publishes hyperpartisan content, clickbait, and false information. Posts originating from the Occupy Democrats Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook.
First Draft News was a project "to fight mis- and disinformation online" founded in 2015 by nine organizations brought together by the Google News Lab. It included Facebook, Twitter, the Open Society Foundations and several philanthropic organizations. In June 2022, First Draft announced it would be shutting down, with its mission continuing at the Information Futures Lab.
Fake news in India refers to fostering and spread of false information in the country which is spread through word of mouth, traditional media and more recently through digital forms of communication such as edited videos, websites, blogs, memes, unverified advertisements and social media propagated rumours. Fake news spread through social media in the country has become a serious problem, with the potential of it resulting in mob violence, as was the case where at least 20 people were killed in 2018 as a result of misinformation circulated on social media.
NewsGuard is a rating system for news and information websites. It is accessible via browser extensions and mobile apps. NewsGuard Technologies Inc., the company behind the tool, also provides services such as misinformation tracking and brand safety for advertisers, search engines, social media platforms, cybersecurity firms, and government agencies.
Social media became an active place to interact during the COVID-19 pandemic, following the onset of social distancing. Overall messaging rates had risen by above 50%, according to a study by Facebook's analytics department. Individuals at home used social media to maintain their relationships and access entertainment to pass time faster.
Joan Donovan is an American social science researcher, sociologist, and academic noted for her research on disinformation. She is the founder of the nonprofit, The Critical Internet Studies Institute (CISI). Since 2023, she is an assistant professor at the College of Communication at Boston University.
Disinformation attacks are strategic deception campaigns involving media manipulation and internet manipulation, to disseminate misleading information, aiming to confuse, paralyze, and polarize an audience. Disinformation can be considered an attack when it occurs as an adversarial narrative campaign that weaponizes multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value-laden judgements—to exploit and amplify identity-driven controversies. Disinformation attacks use media manipulation to target broadcast media like state-sponsored TV channels and radios. Due to the increasing use of internet manipulation on social media, they can be considered a cyber threat. Digital tools such as bots, algorithms, and AI technology, along with human agents including influencers, spread and amplify disinformation to micro-target populations on online platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Google, Facebook, and YouTube.
This timeline includes entries on the spread of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. This includes investigations into the origin of COVID-19, and the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 which is caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. Social media apps and platforms, including Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and YouTube, have contributed to the spread of misinformation. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) reported that conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 began on "day one". CAHN reported on March 16, 2020, that far-right groups in Canada were taking advantage of the climate of anxiety and fear surrounding COVID, to recycle variations of conspiracies from the 1990s, that people had shared over shortwave radio. COVID-19 disinformation is intentional and seeks to create uncertainty and confusion. But most of the misinformation is shared online unintentionally by enthusiastic participants who are politically active.
Renée DiResta is a writer and former research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). DiResta has written about pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare. She has also served as an advisor to the U.S. Congress on ongoing efforts to prevent online and social media disinformation.
The Disinformation Project is a research group studying the effects of disinformation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand.
Yoel Roth is an American technology executive who is the head of trust and safety at Match Group. Roth served as the head of Twitter's trust and safety department, a position he stepped down from in November 2022, following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. Roth is a technology policy fellow at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, he is a technical advisor on the Commission on Information Disorder at the Aspen Institute and a board member at Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media.
Anti-vaccine activism, which collectively constitutes the "anti-vax" movement, is a set of organized activities proclaiming opposition to vaccination, and these collaborating networks have often fought to increase vaccine hesitancy by disseminating vaccine-based misinformation and/or forms of active disinformation. As a social movement, it has utilized multiple tools both within traditional news media and also through various forms of online communication. Activists have primarily focused on issues surrounding children, with vaccination of the young receiving pushback, and they've sought to expand beyond niche subgroups into national political debates.
The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is an international alliance of news media, social media and technology corporations which claim to be working to identify and combat purported disinformation about national elections, the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines. TNI was founded by Jessica Cecil, a leadership figure at the BBC who also serves as the initiative's director.
In advance of the 2020 election, the Stanford Internet Observatory, a CITR member, partnered with three other research organizations to form the Election Integrity Partnership. The partnership's purpose was to create "a coalition of research entities who would focus on supporting real-time information exchange" regarding the spread of potentially misleading claims about election processes and procedures.