NEWS: A Second Scourge Is Battering Brazil’s Flooded South: Disinformation, by Mauricio Savarese and Gabriela Sa Pessoa, published by AP (Available Here)

According to this report, efforts by Brazil’s authorities to provide aid to recently flood-affected communities have been hampered by disinformation. Online actors have disseminated false claims that official agencies are not conducting rescue efforts in Brazil’s southernmost state and that authorities are concealing hundreds of corpses, among other disinformation. More worryingly, online actors have contradicted official warnings and urged people to stay at home (despite ongoing risks) because authorities were just “trying to alarm people.” Last week, representatives from Brazil’s government asked major social media platforms to remove false claims related to these events; all, with the exception of X, agreed to increase their efforts.

Screenshot 2024-05-20 at 10

NEWS: Russian Disinformation Videos Smear Biden Ahead of U.S. Election, by Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers, published in the New York Times (Available Here)

This news story by the New York Times details a new effort by Russia-linked disinformation operatives to interfere in U.S. elections. According to an analysis by Microsoft, a Russian group called Storm-1516 has been sharing videos falsely claiming that trolls farms in Ukraine have been working to disrupt election efforts at the behest of President Biden and the CIA. According to analysts, this is part of a larger effort to pivot toward videos - a format foreign actors may believe could gain more traction with fringe audiences in the U.S.

Screenshot 2024-05-20 at 11

RESEARCH: SoMeR: Multi-View User Representation Learning for Social Media, by Siyi Guo, Keith Burghardt, Valeria Pante, and Kristina Lerman, published in Arxiv (Available Here)

Three researchers from the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute have proposed a new framework, SoMeR, that they claim could be used to identify inauthentic accounts involved in coordinating influence operations. In addition, their framework may be able to measure increased polarization in online discussions after major events. Their model is one of several new solutions being offered by researchers this year to address problems around disinformation and societal tensions in the run-up to important elections.