Many of us are struggling to absorb the news about the novel coronavirus, the virus that causes Covid-19. Lives have been lost. People are gravely ill. Others have been quarantined for weeks. The disease appears to be spreading in numerous countries, including here in the United States. We are facing what has now been labeled as a global pandemic. And many of us are trying to figure out what actions to take to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Our information feeds, from television sets, internet searches, and social media, provide continuous updates about the unfolding crisis — some…

For researchers in online disinformation and information operations, it’s been an interesting week. On Wednesday, Twitter released an archive of tweets shared by accounts from the Internet Research Agency (IRA), an organization in St. Petersburg, Russia, with alleged ties to the Russian government’s intelligence apparatus. This data archive provides a new window into Russia’s recent “information operations.” On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed charges against a Russian citizen for her role in ongoing operations and provided new details about their strategies and goals.

Information operations exploit information systems (like social media platforms) to manipulate audiences for strategic, political…

by Tom Wilson, Ahmer Arif, Melinda McClure Haughey, Leo Stewart, and Kate Starbird

Today (October 17, 2018), Twitter released two data sets related to online information operations that have targeted U.S. citizens in recent years. In this blog, we describe some preliminary analysis of one of these sets — a dataset containing tweets shared by accounts determined (by Twitter) to be associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg, Russia. These accounts had all been suspended and their content had been removed from public view. Twitter has now released the full tweet record for these accounts, going back…

In June 2017 our lab began a research project looking at online conversations about the Syria Civil Defence (aka the “White Helmets”). Over the last 8–9 months, we have spent hundreds of hours conducting analysis on the tweets, accounts, articles, and websites involved in that discourse. Our first peer-reviewed paper was recently accepted to an upcoming conference (ICWSM-18). That paper focuses on a small piece of the structure and dynamics of this conversation, specifically looking at content sharing across websites. Here, I describe that research and highlight a few of the findings.

One important insight from our broader work, which…

Conspiracy Theories, Muddled Thinking, and Political Disinformation

Background: Examining “Alternative Narratives” of Crisis Events

For more than three years, my lab at the University of Washington has conducted research looking at how people spread rumors online during crisis events. We have looked at natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes as well as man-made events such as mass shootings and terrorist attacks. Due to the public availability of data, we focused primarily on Twitter — but we also used data collected there (tweets) to expose broader activity in the surrounding media ecosystem.

Over time, we noted that a similar kind of rumor kept showing up, over and over…

In 2010, as part of a team at the University of Colorado, I organized a crowdsourcing effort to map tweets from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. For more than three months that summer, I collected #oilspill tweets. I also interacted via Twitter with digital volunteers and local citizens (along the Gulf Coast), as we worked together to create a crisis map of the event. At the time, I noted the emotional impact that those involved with the effort were experiencing, especially those who lived within or near the affected areas. I recall exchanging messages one evening with a woman as…