Global Disinformation Lab

In this week's update: 65% of Sri Lankan voters report climate misinfo exposure Brazil debunks false military movement claims Uganda tackles Mpox myths

-This week in Information Disorder Policy- Nations agree: Disinformation is bad. They just can't agree on what it is. At the UN, governments demanded action against fake news while accusing each other of weaponizing information. Iran and Venezuela - hardly champions of press freedom - announced partnership on "countering false information." Meanwhile, India challenged Wikipedia's intermediary status, Mauritius suspended social media for "election stability," and Dublin crowds gathered for an AI-generated fake Halloween parade that never existed. https://lnkd.in/e3v2uTrU

Looking for that weekend read? Check out GDPD's global rundown of government responses to information disorder. https://lnkd.in/eW4W89MV

Track how dozens of governments are addressing (or weaponizing) information disorder - all in one place. Our latest GDPD Weekly covers everything from natural disaster misinfo in the US to AI-powered disinformation in Moldova to "false news" arrests in Egypt. Your essential global policy digest:

?? Introducing GDPD Weekly: Your Global Digest on Information Disorder and Policy We're excited to launch our first edition of GDPD Weekly, leveraging the infrastructure we developed for the Global Disinformation Policy Database. Each week, we'll scan the world for fresh developments in information disorder, providing a comprehensive resource for anyone interested in information policy, online trust and safety, and the global responses to disinformation.

From Vaccines to Viral Content: Public Health Policy and Misinformation ??A new study in The Lancet Public Health shows how public health strategies can be repurposed to combat information disorder. This interdisciplinary approach applies the four levels of prevention from public health to manage infodemics: 1?? Primordial: Prevent risk factors (e.g., build trust, strengthen health systems) 2?? Primary: Prevent onset in at-risk individuals (e.g., improve digital literacy) 3?? Secondary: Early detection and intervention (e.g., social listening, fill information voids) 4?? Tertiary: Minimize negative impacts (e.g., debunking, platform-based interventions) ?? What other fields might offer valuable frameworks for addressing information disorder? Share your ideas below! #Infodemics #PublicHealth #GDPD #Disinformation Read the full paper: https://lnkd.in/efha6dwg

Cutting Room Floor: The Fascinating History of Information Disorder Laws We Can't Include In our work we often encounter intriguing historical laws that fall outside our inclusion criteria. These policies, while not part of our current dataset, offer valuable insights into the long-standing challenges of defining and regulating information disorder. One fascinating example is Article 656 of the Italian Penal Code, which dates back to the fascist criminal code of the 1930s: "Art. 656. Publication or dissemination of false, exaggerated or biased news, capable of disturbing public order Anyone who publishes or spreads false, exaggerated or biased news, which may disturb public order, is punished, if the act does not constitute a more serious crime, with arrest for up to three months or with a fine of up to 309 euros." This law highlights how concerns about "fake news" and its potential to disrupt society long predate our current digital age. It also serves as a stark reminder of how authoritarian regimes used the pretext of combating misinformation to suppress free speech. While our database focuses on more recent policies, we hope to follow up in future projects that focus on historical measures. #Disinformation #MediaLaw #HistoricalPerspective #GDPD

?? Policy Tracking Challenge: Iran's Unofficial Internet Bill Iran is reportedly implementing a controversial internet censorship bill - without formal approval. The GDPD only includes officially implemented policies. But this raises a key question: How do we stay ahead of rapidly changing policy landscapes? How should extralegal actions be collected and compared to "official" actions? This is just one of the many challenges that face teams- like ours- developing policy databases. Read more: https://lnkd.in/e_rQriev What's your take on tracking unofficial policy implementation? Share below! ?? #InformationDisorder #PolicyResearch #disinformation PS: we would love to collect policy responses like these in future versions of our database.

What is included in the GDPD? This is a visual representation of (some of) our inclusion criteria. We find it helpful to equip analysts with an intuition for these criteria. So we try to visualize this kind of logic whenever we can! We think it would be very interesting to try to visualize the logic of the laws and policies themselves... What do you think? #Policy #publicscholarship #disinformation

What is included in the GDPD? This is a visual representation of (some of) our inclusion criteria. We find it helpful to equip analysts with an intuition for these criteria. So we try to visualize this kind of logic whenever we can! We think it would be very interesting to try to visualize the logic of the laws and policies themselves... What do you think? #Policy #publicscholarship #disinformation