Donald Trump, Covid Hitting Policemen: Inoculated Newsletter (28.4.2022)
Here at The Inoculation, we've been scraping Twitter for a bit, trying to find out if far-right politicians are more likely to be anti-vaxx (hint: they are). While we were looking at the Netherlands, we had a hunch that the anti-vaxx politicians are more likely to be pro-Putin.
Are Antivaxxers More Likely to be Pro-Putin?
As part of our data investigation, we took a look at politicians' tweets in the Netherlands. We found that far-right politicians are more likely to tweet about anti-vaccine topics, but we also saw that tweeters with antivaxx stances were more supportive of Vladimir Putin and Russia's invasion
Wary of Russian Aggression, the Baltics Contain Political Falsehoods but Struggle with COVID Disinfo
Disinformation warfare is not new to the Baltic States - and they have been boosting their preparedness since 2014 [https://www.equaltimes.org/latvia-readies-for-information-war] and were lauded [https://theconversation.com/countering-russian-disinformation-the-baltic-nations-way-109366] as successful [https://www.dw.com/en/baltics-battle-russia-in-online-disinformation-war/a-40828834] . Then why did countering COVID-19 disinformation prove challenging? In December,
Portugal: Is Europe’s Vaccine Hero Losing Its “Special Balance”, Allowing Right-Wing Parties to Flourish?
After elections in January, Portuguese Socialists have secured an absolute majority, promising political continuity in the country that enjoys Europe's highest rate of vaccination against COVID-19. But the side story of the election was that Portugal's previous immunity to far-right representation in parliament has waned: the
Querdenker, Fake Debunking, Epoch Times: Inoculated Newsletter (17.3.2022)
📰News: 1. Coda Story takes a look [https://www.codastory.com/disinformation/epoch-times/] at the Epoch Times, the purveyor of Trumpian misinformation and anti-science conspiracies that already gained traction in Germany eyes expansion in the UK. 2. Long Lead [https://longlead.com/] has a fantastic investigation [https://longlead.com/article/
French Elections are Coming up. Right-Wing Politicians Are Dominating the Vaccine Debate on Twitter. Here's Why: (Episode 24)
We used a custom Twitter scraper to collect and analyze the tweets of 12 candidates slated to run in the first round of the French presidential election on April 10. We discuss our findings and talk to Estelle Brun [https://www.iris-france.org/experts/estelle-brun/], an associate research fellow at
Ukraine Disinformation Special: Inoculated Newsletter (3.3.2022)
In this edition, we'll take a look at Ukraine and Russian disinformation. Some background on how Russian disinformation works in these podcast episodes: 📰News of the week: 1. Kremlin-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik are [https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-rt-sputnik-illegal-europe/] officially banned in the EU, a crackdown
The Falsehood Firehose: How Russian Disinformation Actors Spread Propaganda (Episode 23)
As Russia invades Ukraine, we revisited our conversation with Miriam Matthews [https://www.rand.org/about/people/m/matthews_miriam.html], author of a report published last April called Superspreaders of Malign and Subversive Information [https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA112-11.html]. It describes how Russia actors use
Telegram, Zerohedge and Canadian Truckers: Inoculated Newsletter (17.2.2022)
📰News of the week: 1. U.S. intelligence officials said Zerohedge, a conservative financial news website, with a significant American readership is amplifying Kremlin propaganda, according to the AP [https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-coronavirus-pandemic-health-moscow-media-ff4a56b7b08bcdc6adaf02313a85edd9?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP] . Here's our episode
Will Super-Powerful Artificial Intelligence Turbocharge Disinformation? (Episode 22)
Georgetown University researchers programmed a text generator to come up with disinformation on climate change and politics. Once tweeted, the computer-generated disinformation persuaded test subjects, and could even nudge the readers to change their minds on important subjects such as climate change and politics. This episode explores the power and
Disinformation in Audio, Spotify Fallout, Anti-vaxxers and Human Sacrifice: Inoculated Newsletter (03.02.2022)
Last week was all about disinformation in podcasts, more specifically, antivax disinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast on Spotify. If you need some more background, here [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/human-sacrifice-ritual-mass-vaccination/621355/] 's my Medium post. 📰News of the week: 1. The Washington Post
Here’s Why Joe Rogan’s Antivax Comments Are So Dangerous – Disinformation on Social Audio and Podcasts (Episode 21)
After Spotify chose to remove Neil Young's music rather than challenge its relationship with podcaster Joe Rogan (you can read more about the controversy here), the problem of disinformation in audio is rearing its head
