Disinformation

A conversation with Carlos Hernández- Echevarría from Maldita.es, a Spanish independent journalistic platform focused on the control of disinformation and public discourse through fact-checking and data journalism techniques. 

A conversation with Danny Rogers from the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) on the business model behind disinformation activities and ways to defund and disincentivize their propagators by providing the industry with clear definitions and data.

A conversation with Sam Jeffers, Co-Founder of "Who Targets Me", about the power of social media, and particularly, of social media advertising in influencing people in election campaigns and ways of making the political campaigning environment more trustworthy, transparent and comprehensible for people.

A conversation with Nicole Krause from the Life Sciences Communication Department at the University of Wisconsin about science and political communication and ways to communicate more effectively with conservative, religious and rural audiences.

This Spotlight explores how the ability of AI to disseminate information more effectively is prone to abuse and can pose a threat to democracy. It then discusses the preconditions and potential of AI to support the building of a critical public sphere.

The DSA could help addressing the challenges of harmful content and disinformation online by increasing the legal protections while encouraging platforms to be more transparent and accountable without imposing requirements to generally monitor content.

One can say that fake news is old news, and so are misogyny, sexism, and gender stereotypes. What has changed in the digital era is the ease of coordinating, financing, and propagating disinformation campaigns.

Traditional news media, especially print, face existential threats in the digital era but continue to play a vital role in sustaining the public sphere despite their reduced scale.

A conversation with Dr. Erez Garty from the Davidson Institute about misinformation around Covid-19 in Israel, vaccine hesitancy and what is needed to make a dent in the problem of science denialism and propagation of conspiracy theories.

In a hyperlinked media ecosystem, separate actions taken by distinct online platforms to curb disinformation efforts are falling short as adversarial actors forge ahead. This Spotlight describes two emerging ways in which actors have used cross-platform tactics to successfully execute disinformation campaigns.

Over the past two decades, social media has significantly reshaped democratic societies, offering greater diversity of opinion and information exchange while also posing risks of subversion exploited by authoritarian regimes.

A conversation with Noa Barak about disinformation and the role of fact-checkers in Israel. 

A conversation with Dr. Philipp Lorenz-Spreen about cognitive patterns, heuristics and the role of policymakers in designing healthy online choice environments. 

A conversation with Dr. Henning Lahmann about disinformation, free speech and the potential opportunities and pitfalls of legal tools in addressing the challenges to democracy in the digital age.

A conversation with Alexander Sängerlaub about the digital transformation of the public sphere, its consequences for democracy and the role of education and media literacy in fostering democratic resilience in the digital age. 

This text evaluates online media control in liberal democracies, noting that combating disinformation has increasingly justified governmental restrictions on information flow.

A conversation with Dr. Julian Jaursch about the potential of platform regulation in Germany and the EU in addressing disinformation and fostering democratic principles in the digital public sphere.  

A conversation with Rebecca Winkels from Science in Dialog about the importance and strategies of building bridges between the science community and all parts of society, in Germany and beyond. 

As dis- and misinformation continues to surge around the ongoing pandemic and the vaccines, citizens' trust in democratic institutions is constantly put to the test. This Spotlight explores the various factors that account for a country's level of resilience to mis- and disinformation via the prism of the Media Literacy Index (MLI) and integrates the case of Israel for the first time into the analysis.  

A conversation with Dr. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari about science communication and its role in facilitating dialog with insular communities in Israel.