Disinformation Campaigns - Article Analysis
70 Countries have now experienced organized disinformation campaigns
A study recently released by two Oxford scholars, Samantha Bradshaw and Phillip N. Howard has identified an increase of 169% from the past 2 years in countries engaging in disinformation campaigns. The attention around disinformation has recently been brought to the eyes of the Australian public with a nation-wide advertising campaign named ‘Your Right to Know’.
What is a disinformation campaign?
A disinformation campaign is a country’s use of organised social media to manipulate information for the purposes of suppressing fundamental human rights, discrediting political opponents and drowning out dissenting opinions.
These are some of the highlights of the Global Disinformation Report:
Since 2017, the number of countries engaging in disinformation campaigns has increased from 26 to 70 (169% increase). Despite recent rises, research from the scholars suggests that many countries have been manipulating social media for the past decade.
China has transitioned from a domestic misinformation approach to a global one. This has seen it highlight Hong Kong’s democracy activists as ‘radicals with no popular appeal’, demonstrating the adverse affects these campaigns can have on their targets.
The report highlights Australia as a country being manipulated on both Facebook and Twitter, but has avoided cyber troop activity on WhatsApp, YouTube, and Instagram.
When comparing Australia to the UK and the US, there have only been two identified cases of disinformation - both related to politicians and political parties. The UK on the other hand, has seen two organisations found for government agencies, politicians and political parties as well as disinformation from private contractors. The US boasts even greater stats, showing 3 or more cases for each of the mentioned organisational bodies.
80% of countries engaged in using disinformation campaigns used bot accounts to conduct them
Australia has only used disinformation campaigns to support a political movement or attack another. On the other hand, the US and the UK have used it to both support and attack parties, as well as distract and divide its target audience in order to achieve its goals. On top of this, the report found that the messages shared was manipulated media (disinformation) and largely used data-driven strategies.
The report identifies the countries with high cyber troop capacity have large resource allocations on a permanent basis. It estimates, for example, that China could have anywhere from 300,000 to 2,000,000 people working on disinformation campaigns at any one point in time.
Takeaways and Analysis
The last two lines of the conclusion of the report ask the reader whether social media platforms are places for public deliberation and democracy or tools to amplify addiction, disinformation and anger. The answer to that question is that there is no right answer.
For many, after reading the report and this analysis it may become clear that unpredictable and catastrophic events in recent times including the Trump administration, Brexit, and the Hong Kong riots have been, at least in part, influenced by these disinformation campaigns. Despite this, the purpose of these campaigns is to manipulate their target to behave and/or think in a certain way. As a result, it is imperative that people are better educated about the prominence of such campaigns and the ways they target and influence people. Our personal data is and will always be used in approaches to influence our decisions, but it is up to us, as the decision makers, to understand that not all information is good information. Our opinions and beliefs about political parties, people and/or businesses should therefore only be moulded once we have conducted our own research and analysis, rather than being reactive to campaigns in our social feeds. This way, our data can only be used to empower, rather than cripple, us.
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