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To gain insight into how Chinese state media is communicating about the coronavirus pandemic to the outside world, we analyzed a collection of posts from their English-language presence on Facebook. We observed three recurring behaviors: sharing positive stories and promoting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) pandemic response, rewriting recent history in a manner favorable to the CCP as the coronavirus pandemic evolved, and using targeted ads to spread preferred messages.

One major concern about fake news is that it could damage the public trust in democratic institutions. We examined this possibility using longitudinal survey data combined with records of online behavior. Our study found that online misinformation was linked to lower trust in mainstream media across party lines.

We designed, implemented and evaluated a game about fake news to test its potential to enhance news literacy skills in educational settings. The game was largely effective at facilitating complex news literacy skills. When these skills were integrated into the design and fictional narrative of the game, diverse groups of students engaged with the learning goals and transferred this knowledge to real life contexts.

When Italy became the western center of the COVID-19 outbreak, it also became the focus of a series of states-sponsored coordinated disinformation campaigns. From early March through May 2020, disinformation operations in the country have increased noticeably, showing evidence of evolving strategies from multiple state actors geared towards reshaping the narrative of the global COVID-19 crisis and pushing forward geopolitical interests.

With over 30,000 confirmed cases, Brazil is currently the country most affected by COVID-19 in Latin America, and ranked 12th worldwide (John Hopkins University & Medicine, 2020). Despite all evidence, a strong rhetoric undermining risks associated to COVID-19 has been endorsed at the highest levels of the Brazilian government, making President Jair Bolsonaro the leader of the “coronavirus-denial movement” (Friedman, 2020.

We analyzed the Russian Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) 2015–2017 English-language information operation on Twitter to understand the special role that engagement with outsiders (i.e., non-IRA affiliated accounts) played in their campaign. By analyzing the timing and type of engagement of IRA accounts with non-IRA affiliated accounts, and the characteristics of the latter, we identified a three-phases life cycle of such engagement, which was central to how this IRA network operated.

We conducted a mixed-method, interpretative analysis of an online, cross-platform disinformation campaign targeting the White Helmets, a rescue group operating in rebel-held areas of Syria that have become the subject of a persistent effort of delegitimization. This research helps to conceptualize what a disinformation campaign is and how it works.

Evidence from an analysis of Twitter data reveals that Russian social media trolls exploited racial and political identities to infiltrate distinct groups of authentic users, playing on their group identities. The groups affected spanned the ideological spectrum, suggesting the importance of coordinated counter-responses from diverse coalitions of users.