Introduction
A collection of guides and toolkits for civil society organisations on how to counter disinformation collated by the Commons Librarians.
Resources
Building Civil Society Capacity to Mitigate and Counter Disinformation
This chapter in Countering Disinformation: A Guide to Promoting Information Integrity was written by Amy Studdart, Senior Advisor for Digital Democracy at the International Republican Institute. It looks at civil society approaches to countering disinformation including fact-checking, digital forensics and research, advocacy to governments and platforms, digital and media literacy, networking and coalition building, and international cooperation.
As disinformation often disproportionately (and often earlier) targets women and historically marginalized groups within specific contexts, CSOs or coalitions are often best placed to identify emerging campaigns early, and to generate awareness, mobilize opposition, or advocate responses broadly. By creating this sense of solidarity and shared interest, civic organizations are well placed not only to defend vulnerable groups from specific harms, but to increase the resilience to disinformation of society broadly, including members of groups who have not been historically vulnerable or marginalized. For all these reasons, civil society plays a critical role in the broader ecosystem for countering disinformation. Source
This chapter runs through a number of interventions, details civil society’s advantages and disadvantages as it relates to each intervention and concludes with recommendations as to how to support and strengthen civil society’s contributions to addressing disinformation.
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Disinformation Toolkit 2.0: How Civil Society & NGOs can Combat Harmful Mis- and Disinformation
Disinformation campaigns are a potent tool for closing civic space. Powerful actors leverage disproportionate access to or control of local media platforms and social media channels to spread disinformation. p. 11
The toolkit by Adam Fivenson from Inter Action “presents tools, examples, and recommendations for organisations and individuals targeted by disinformation or confronting its harmful impact in the context of their civil society, development, or humanitarian work around the globe.
- How does disinformation impact the critical work of international NGOs across sectors? How are NGOs responding to this threat?
- Which currently existing tools and guides are most relevant to your organization’s work and unique risk profile? What does the evidence tell us about what’s working?
- How does disinformation impact the crisis-affected and marginalized populations that NGOs support around the globe? What do the experts recommend NGOs do in response?
- What are the key considerations and decision-points for NGOs that are themselves the subject of disinformation attacks? How can NGOs keep staff, reputations, and relationships of trust with communities safe from such attacks?” – Source: Five Key Takeaways from Interactions Disinformation Toolkit 2.0
How Civil Society can Combat Misinformation & Hate Speech without Making it Worse
This guide by the Technology and Social Change project and Dr. Joan Donovan explores a set of potential strategies to be used specifically by civil society organizations to mitigate the harms of misinformation. It shares 6 strategies for fighting media manipulation and disinformation to protect communities caught in the crosshairs of a disinformation campaign. The strategies are:
- 1. Connected Communities
- 2. Fact/Fallacy/Fact or “The Truth Sandwich”
- 3. Prebunking
- 4. Distributed Debunking
- 5. Localize the Context
- 6. Humor Over Rumor
Once we have documented a pattern of malicious behavior, we create a timeline of events for deeper analysis. During our investigation, we gather evidence by taking screenshots or a screen recording of everything we encounter. If it is misinformation, there is a chance that tech companies may delete content without notifying anyone. The more evidence we have, the better we can make our case. p.1
How to Respond to Misinformation Online: A Campaigner’s Guide to Combatting Misinformation
This guide by Purpose will help you develop effective rapid response campaigns combating misinformation and disinformation threats using their online threats response model. The guide will help with:
- “Identifying potential misinformation and disinformation threats online.
- Assessing the nature, reach, and impact level of misinformation threats using the response model matrix.
- Defining your ‘Response Goal’ and guiding you towards the most suitable action to take for each unique threat.
- Prioritizing the appropriateness of each “Response Goal” corresponding to each cell of the Threat Matrix.
- Developing quick, targeted, and innovative campaigns that incorporate multifaceted solutions to countering misinformation, extending beyond conventional debunking efforts.”
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How to: Dealing with Disinformation
This guide by Blueprints for Change deals with the issues faced by ordinary campaigners, activists and organizations challenged by disinformation in their day-to-day efforts to make progressive change.
It also references the larger projects tackling the systemic causes of disinformation, such as government actors, media platforms, and broken internet infrastructure, but we primarily focus on what you can do right now. In other words, this guide is mainly about steps to take if a lie about your campaign is being spread on Facebook, for example, rather than how to campaign to change Facebook itself.
One of the most valuable lessons we learned from campaigners who successfully dealt with disinformation was that it was not always necessary to deal with it.
So if you only read and act on one part of this guide, we would recommend the first of the “Steps to take” on risk assessment and mitigation. It may save you from losing time, emotional energy, and reputation in reacting (or overreacting) to disinformation, which unfortunately is becoming a challenge most campaigners will face at some point.
Explore Further
- Disinformation Risk Management
- Erica Chenoweth on 5 Paths Social Movements Can Take in a Disinformation Era
- Database of Informational Inventions, Disinformation, Countering Disinformation: A Guide to Promoting Information Integrity
- Guide on Digital Tools for Countering Disinformation, HiveMind
- A Guide to Prebunking: A Promising Way to Inoculate Against Misinformation
- Skill Up: Learn to Identify Disinformation with Games and Courses
- Disinformation with Games and Courses
- When Facts Fail: How We Fight Misinformation
- Disinformation vs Misinformation: Definitions & Types