Catalog: Background/General/Other
Useful materials that don’t have a home in another section.
This page is one part of the Prism Anti-Misinformation Resources Catalog. See the Table of Contents to navigate to other categories of resources.
Definitions, etc.
Here are media manipulation terms needed to understand mis-, dis-, and malinformation (E. Rosalie via Substack)
Definitions for commonly used, sometimes confused, vocabulary in the field of misinformation.
What is Mis/dis and mal-information & what can we do? (ProPrivacy)
Several members of the ProPrivacy team attended an online discussion about mis/dis and mal-information that covered everything from media literacy to the military application of disinformation. Many of the topics covered are heavily connected to the privacy-invasive features of the social media platforms we all use.
Prism Metanews definition of misinformation (via Twitter)
Three graphics to illustrate how Prism determines whether a thing is misinformation or not.
A short guide to the history of 'fake news' and disinformation (International Center for Journalists)
A learning module for journalists and journalism educators, covering misinformation through human history. Intended to increase participants’ awareness of the history of uses of news formats for reasons alien to journalistic ethics and standards, enable participants to better recognise the context of instrumentalising information for personal or political gain, profit, or entertainment purposes, increase awareness of the role that news satire has played in both informing and confusing news outlets and news consumers, and equip participants to be better prepared to analyse new threats in historical contexts.
Autopsy of a metaphor: The origins, use and blind spots of the ‘infodemic’ (Felix M Simon and Chico Q Camargo via new media & society)
Information does not spread like a virus. The ‘infodemic’ metaphor can be misleading, as it conflates multiple forms of social behaviour, oversimplifies a complex situation and helps constitute a phenomenon for which concrete evidence remains patchy.
How to Think About Misinformation: Reboot’s Approach (Reboot)
The “fake news” crisis is really a crisis of media literacy and critical thinking.
Broad conclusions about the state of misinformation and disinformation: 1) There is a real crisis of media literacy among a huge swath of the American population. 2) There are definite interventions that we can make to shore up people’s media literacy skills, but we need the help of governments, schools, and tech platforms to make an impact. 3) Fake news is bigger than the 2020 election. It’s more than red states versus blue states.
Other Resource Collections
Disinformation Knowledge Center (Aspen Institute Commission on Information Disorder)
Downloadable background and context on information disorder for use by Information Disorder commissioners. Selected experts and relevant readings so that the public may follow along with the Commission on Information Disorder’s work.
Get Smart About News newsletter (News Literacy Project)
Modeled on The Sift newsletter for educators, Get Smart About News is our new free newsletter designed for the general public. It explores timely examples of misinformation, addresses media and press freedom topics and discusses social media trends and issues.
Media Literacy & Misinformation (Monmouth University Guggenheim Memorial Library)
A collection of resources related to media literacy and misinformation.
Topics in Misinformation: Deepfakes and Other Visuals
Deepfakes: When you can’t believe your own eyes (News Literacy Project)
Digital technology allows just about anyone to create deepfakes — videos that have been digitally manipulated to make a person appear to say or do something that the person never said or did.
Pre-Empting a Crisis: Deepfake Detection Skills + Global Access to Media Forensics Tools (Sam Gregory via Witness)
In this blog post I summarize recommendations and learnings from our work focused on facilitating appropriate tools, access and related support for deepfakes detection.
Visual Mis- and Disinformation, Social Media, and Democracy (Viorela Dan, Britt Paris, Joan Donovan, Michael Hameleers, Jon Roozenbeek, Sander van der Linden, and Christian von Sikorski via Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly)
SUMMARY: This forum brings together expert scholars focusing on key domains of visual political mis- and disinformation, including disinformation videos, online platform functionality and audiovisual disinformation, multimodal disinformation, and prebunking or “vaccinating citizens against visual disinformation.”
Topics in Misinformation: Elections
No evidence for systematic voter fraud: A guide to statistical claims about the 2020 election (Andrew C. Eggers, Haritz Garro, and Justin Grimmer via PNAS)
Reviewing the most prominent statistical claims of election fraud, we conclude that none of them is even remotely convincing. The common logic behind these claims is that, if the election were fairly conducted, some feature of the observed 2020 election result would be unlikely or impossible. In each case, we find that the purportedly anomalous fact is either not a fact or not anomalous.
Topics in Misinformation: COVID and Medical Science
A Community Toolkit for Addressing Health Misinformation (Office of the U.S. Surgeon General)
A resource for health care professionals/administrators, teachers/school administrators/librarians, faith leaders, and trusted members of their communities.
KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: Media and Misinformation (Kaiser Family Foundation)
We find in the latest Vaccine Monitor that belief in pandemic-related misinformation is widespread, with 78% of adults saying they have heard at least one of eight different false statements about COVID-19 and that they believe it to be true or are unsure if it is true or false. One-third (32%) of all adults believe or are uncertain about at least four false statements. Belief in COVID-19 misinformation is correlated with both vaccination status and partisanship, with unvaccinated adults and Republicans much more likely to believe or be unsure about false statements compared to vaccinated adults and Democrats.
The Anti-Vaccine Influencers Who Are Merely Asking Questions (Renée DiResta via The Atlantic)
Institutional experts haven’t adapted to today’s media ecosystem. Other commentators are filling the gap.
The Antiscience Movement Is Escalating, Going Global and Killing Thousands (Scientific American)
Rejection of mainstream science and medicine has become a key feature of the political right in the U.S. and increasingly around the world.
Topics in Misinformation: Russia’s War on Ukraine
Combating disinformation about the war in Ukraine (News Literacy Project)
News-literate practices to help you avoid falling for Ukraine misinformation.
Thread: Fake images from Russia’s invasion (@Shayan86 via Twitter)
A running compilation of debunked visuals from the war.
Thread: Fake things circulating about Ukraine/Russia (@Prism_Metanews via Twitter)
A running compilation of debunked rumors and other nonsense from the war.
Topics in Misinformation: Climate Change
Fighting back against climate misinformation, and the damage being done (John Cook via Monash University)
This is a rigorous way to systematically identify techniques used to mislead. This is necessary because exposing the rhetorical tricks used in misinformation is the key to inoculating people from being misled.
Topics in Misinformation: Race and Identity
The Conservative Disinformation Campaign Against Nikole Hannah-Jones (Alice Marwick and Daniel Kreiss via Slate)
An examination of Critical Race Theory (CRT)- related misinformation.
How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory (Benjamin Wallace-Wells via New Yorker)
To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon.
Topics in Misinformation: QAnon
QAnon's corrosive impact on the U.S. (60 Minutes)
Tens of millions of Americans believe QAnon's core — and false — theory that an evil cabal of Satan-worshipping elites commits atrocities against children and controls much of the world. Where does this movement stand and who has it impacted? Lesley Stahl reports.
Explainer: Why did QAnon Factionalize? (@dappergander via Patreon)
A two-part series looking at the factions that exist within the QAnon community.
Topics in Misinformation: Opinion and Bias
Americans and the News Media: What they do — and don’t — understand about each other (American Press Institute)
A key factor in the erosion of Americans’ trust of their news media is a failure to communicate — we have a public that doesn’t fully understand how journalists work, and journalism that doesn’t make itself understandable to much of the public. The Media Insight Project conducted twin surveys of both the public and journalists, asking each group parallel questions about the public’s understanding of journalistic concepts, the public’s interactions with journalists, and how all of that affects people’s assessment of the news media.
Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News (Pew Research Center)
The politically aware, digitally savvy and those more trusting of the news media fare better. Republicans and Democrats are both influenced by the political appeal of statements.
Opinion: Opt-in to op-eds, a final attempt to distinguish news from opinion (Michael Bugeja via Poynter)
Americans can’t tell the difference between fact and factoid and assign political labels to news outlets based on columnists rather than reporters.
Should you trust media bias charts? (Poynter)
These controversial charts claim to show the political lean and credibility of news organizations. Here’s what you need to know about them.
Miscellaneous
Gamifying Disinformation Mitigation (Doowan Lee, Yi-Ting Lien, and Elizabeth Lange via Cipher Brief)
Gamification is the integration of game mechanics into a non-game environment in order to give it a game-like feel, motivating users to accomplish tasks in a given context. The application of such an approach has been increasingly popular.
Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy (CNN)
In 2014, Finland’s government launched an anti-fake news initiative aimed at teaching residents, students, journalists and politicians how to counter false information designed to sow division. The initiative is just one layer of a multi-pronged, cross-sector approach the country is taking. Finland, which shares an 832-mile border with Russia, is acutely aware of what’s at stake if it doesn’t (see Crimea, Eastern Ukraine).
Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, and Lies: An Information Laundering Model for Homeland Security (Samantha Korta via Homeland and Security Affairs)
This research demonstrates how the interconnectedness of various internet platforms, coupled with existing and emerging online technologies, can be exploited to launder false or purposefully misleading information into public discourse at a volume and velocity previously unimaginable.