JonathanDisinformation.
It's not new. It can be foreign interference.
A thread in which I provide links to articles about disinformation and combatting it, and also get banned by a (fake) television channel.
This is a good entry page
Some interesting publications on the government of Canada CSIS website
https://www.canada.ca/en/security-intelligence-service/corporate/publications.html
There have been many articles written on disinformation, its sources, reasons, etc.
This is just one:
Government-sponsored disinformation and the severity of respiratory infection epidemics including COVID-19: A global analysis, 2001–2020
Internet misinformation and government-sponsored disinformation campaigns have been criticized for their presumed/hypothesized role in worsening the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We hypothesize that these government-sponsored disinformation ...
This is just one example, but disclose.tv is misinformation.
(I got blocked on the bird site by them for this post.)
https://www.dw.com/en/disclosetv-english-disinformation-made-in-germany/a-60694332
Well I've never been blocked by a (kinda) TV channel before so ...
... that's cool.
"That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It."
Broniatowski, David A., et al . ‘Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate’. American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 10 (October 2018): 1378–84. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567.
"It was especially effective to offer rebuttals in “vulnerable subgroups,” such as people in the U.S. who identify as conservative."
Amusing sentence, haha.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0632-4
Hmm this isn't free either.
This is a summary article, which is:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8.pdf
Here are authors' slides:
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/epi-win/presentations-of-all-speeches/webinar-14-ps-ue-8-april-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=7725b501_2
Countering science denial - Nature Human Behaviour
As the spectre of ‘post-truth’ looms over society, an important question remains: how to effectively respond to the growing climate of science denial? New research shows that leaving denial unanswered can have negative consequences. Fortunately, countering science deniers can reduce their influence, even among those most likely to hold anti-scientific beliefs.
"It takes a village to manipulate the media: coordinated link sharing behavior during 2018 and 2019 Italian elections"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1739732
This one is not free. I won't delete it, but I thought it was open access.
Allem, Jon-Patrick, and Emilio Ferrara. ‘Could Social Bots Pose a Threat to Public Health?’ American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 8 (August 2018): 1005–6. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304512.
This is an interesting one about conflicts of interest in the infection prevention and control field.
Abbas, Mohamed, Daniela Pires, Alexandra Peters, Chantal M Morel, Samia Hurst, Alison Holmes, Hiroki Saito, et al. ‘Conflicts of Interest in Infection Prevention and Control Research: No Smoke without Fire. A Narrative Review’. Intensive Care Medicine 44, no. 10 (October 2018): 1679–90. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-018-5361-z.
Anti-mask #disinformation
Ayers, John W., Brian Chu, Zechariah Zhu, Eric C. Leas, Davey M. Smith, Mark Dredze, and David A. Broniatowski. ‘Spread of Misinformation About Face Masks and COVID-19 by Automated Software on Facebook’. JAMA Internal Medicine, 7 June 2021. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.2498.
Disinfo artists but also science communicators will lie to you
"we show via citation analysis how science communicators and practiced conspiracy theorists alike manufacture the appearance of consensus using selective and critical citation to create dueling, opposite perceptions of scientific knowledge"
Beers et al ‘Selective and Deceptive Citation in the Construction of Dueling Consensuses’ Science Advances 9, no 38 (22 Sept 2023). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh1933
Thread specifically about Russian disinformation
Disinformation is produced by a vocal minority of people.
There's almost always an economic reason for them to do it.
Consuming it skews your views of what regular people think.
Not consuming it will reduce your animosity and increase your happiness.
"It turns out if people stop following the [disinformation] accounts, they feel better and become less hostile.
Given the chance, they do not want to re-follow them."
- Jay Van Bavel, Prof of Psychology, NYU (from interview above)
He also mentioned that there's almost always an economic incentive. The grifting disinformation purveyors are usually hawking garbage products.
And lo and behold I bumped into Huberman snuggling up to Musk.
The disinformation grifters always do find one another, don't they 😄
Huberman is a hot mess. He continually exploits his connections to Stanford, too.
Of course Bari Weiss will put him (and many other grifters) on CBS which is why you never need to watch CBS again.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/30/bari-weiss-new-cbs-news-contributors
And by the way, nobody should have any respect for Stanford whatsoever. They keep covering for this grifter charlatan
"A spokesperson for Stanford meanwhile told New York Magazine: “Dr Huberman’s lab at Stanford is operational and is in the process of moving from the Department of Neurobiology to the Department of Ophthalmology.”"
Coach Pāṇini ®
Kate Nyhan is changing servers@jmcrookston Someday I will stop being so salty about how AJPH sticks a paywall in front of so much of its OLD content that is FREE TO READ in PubMed Central... but today is not that day
Link to read the short paper you recommended without a subscription:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050826/
Thanks.
Hmm, I guess my citation manager pulled the DOI, which links to the journal page.
I got the paper from PubMed, personally.
@jmcrookston
Strictly speaking I suspect you read the paper on PubMed Central, rather than PubMed per se.
PMC is a database with the full text of papers that are
- subject to funder public access policies
- or in journals that "fully participate" in PMC (including AJPH, with a 24-month embargo)
PubMed is a database with titles, abstracts, and some other article metadata (but not the full text) of
- articles in Medline journals
- articles in PMC
- a little bit of other stuff
Thanks! I usually just referred to them both as PubMed and never looked into what PMC was. Now I know! I knew PubMed was many more documents, now it makes sense why.
Yes, Unpaywall is very useful, I use it all the time.
i often also find articles by searching "title-of-article PDF" or "... DOC".
@jmcrookston
APHA (the association): Our mission is to "Improve the health of the public and achieve equity in health status"
AJPH (the journal): "We aim to embrace all of public health, from global policies to the local needs of public health practitioners, and provide the historical context and the evidence."
Also AJPH:if you're not a member of the association, and if you're not affiliated with an academic institution with a big library, please pay $24 to access this 941-word article
Yeah I see another one of the articles is also pay, so linked a summary and authors' slides. What a pain.
@jmcrookston
If it's in AJPH, it is (or will be) available in PMC one or two years after the official publication date
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/258/
If it's from a different journal, I recommend the browser plugins Unpaywall and OA Button to be informed about legal, free-to-tead copies that the authors might have "self-archived" in repositories or their own website.
If it's in AJPH, it is (or will be) available in PMC one or two years after the official publication date
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/258/
If it's from a different journal, I recommend the browser plugins Unpaywall and OA Button to be informed about legal, free-to-tead copies that the authors might have "self-archived" in repositories or their own website.
TJ Radcliffe@kdnyhan @jmcrookston I wasn't aware of Unpaywall... thanks for mentioning it!
skua@jmcrookston
"Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don’t go to social media looking for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they have found them."
This has to be happening on Mastodon too.
"Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don’t go to social media looking for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they have found them."
This has to be happening on Mastodon too.