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 ®