With conspiracy ideology more prevalent than ever, & new narratives likely surrounding the 2024 US elections, we examined 3 recent violent incidents motivated by conspiratorial thinking. What does this tell us about preventing extremist violence? 👇isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… Despite little media coverage, the incidents— a car ramming into an FBI field office, police seizing firearms/explosive components & a felon found w/ weapons— occurred shortly after a fmr govt employee was allegedly beheaded by his son motivated in part by anti-govt conspiracies.

US accelerationists’ support for Hamas is not rooted in shared religious/cultural beliefs, but in their common opposition to Jews & the West. ISD analyzes how the Israel-Hamas conflict has been deconstructed as a radicalization/recruitment opportunity 👇 isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… Rooted in antisemitic and 'white genocide' conspiracy theories, accelerationists have been posting about the Israel-Hamas conflict expressing hateful rhetoric, while encouraging violence against Jewish people in the US and across the West. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

🇵🇸🇮🇱 | Following Hamas' terrorist attack, ISD identified alarming trends of anti-Muslim hate online, including an initial 422% surge in anti-Muslim language on X and spikes on alt-tech platforms like Patriots[.]win, Bitchute, Gab and Odysee. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… During conflicts such as this, increased expressions of hate, both on- and offline, are not uncommon. Muslim and Jewish communities are often blamed for events in the Middle East, based on harmful stereotypes and perceived connections to foreign conflicts.

🇷🇺 Russian state media's Resistor Newswire hasn't gained much traction online despite 18+ months of operation. It’s just the latest spin-off outlet to be uncovered by ISD. What does this tell us about Russian influence operation tactics? 🧵 below. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… Russian state media has been working to subvert restrictions and bans on their content following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. How? By creating new online channels to distribute their content: isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

Since Jan 6, extremists have broadened their focus from elections/COVID to topics like LGBTQ+ rights. ISD has also seen hate mainstreamed, and a worrying % of Americans viewing violence as an acceptable response to policies they disagree with. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… What has changed in the last 2 years? While social media is still a huge piece of the extremism puzzle, alt-tech platforms that provide restriction-free spaces have altered tactics & targets. And the US is setting the framework for those abroad. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

How can religious communities targeted by online hate protect themselves? In today's Dispatch, we analyse how an English town leveraged on- and offline actors who sought to frame the building of a mosque as an anti-patriotic, provocative act. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… After 15+ yrs of setting local roots, the Muslim community in Harrogate was ready for their own place of worship. With the planning application made public, they knew the attacks would come & decided to get ahead with “measured and calm responses.” isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

Today, ISD and @caadcoalition launched a new flagship report on disinformation and the climate crisis, unpacking the narratives and tactics that emerged around the COP27 summit in Nov. 🌍🔥🚨

A🧵of key findings, and what we can do in response, below. isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio… @caadcoalition First, we found the increasing centrality of an 'anti-woke agenda' around climate. Accounts following the 50 top climate misinformers on Twitter were engaging w/ a broad conservative agenda, for which climate has become a key talking point, according to mapping by @Graphika_NYC.

Today we are proud to announce the official launch of Beam, our counter-disinformation capability developed in collaboration with CASM Technology.

Read on to find out more, or check out our new website: beamdisinfo.org @carljackmiller Beam is a capability for detecting, analysing and countering information operations and manipulation.

It combines the most relevant analytical practices from machine learning and data science, connecting them with top-tier expertise on info threats.

beamdisinfo.org

Since QAnon’s rise to fame, celebrities like Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, Chrissy Teigen & more, have found themselves at the centre of the movement’s conspiratorial narratives, quickly becoming the targets of hate, slander and coordinated harassment. isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio… We wanted to examine whether this harassment operates like other forms of targeted hate and harassment online, and explore the role of gender-based violence (GBV) against a sample of prominent celebrities targeted by the QAnon community. isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio…

Our CEO, Sasha Havlicek, joined world leaders including NZ PM Jacinda Ardern & French President Emmanual Macron in NY this month for the Christchurch Call Leaders’ Summit. We talk about it in our latest Insights issue. isdglobal.org/insights-newsl… Also in this issue, our independent investigation into what Meta has described as "the largest and most complex Russian operation" the company has disrupted since the invasion of Ukraine. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

A new ISD investigation exposes the full extent of a pro-Kremlin influence operation spanning social media pages, cloned websites and fake videos. Read our full report, out now. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… Three days ago, Meta announced a takedown of “the largest and most complex Russian operation” since the invasion of Ukraine. Since August, when ISD helped @tonline expose part of the same operation, ISD has been working to unravel the full network. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

Far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour’s campaign team appears to have used coordinated inauthentic behaviour to astroturf support & influence voters ahead of the 2022 elections.

This and more from the latest ISD France 🇫🇷 investigation, out now. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… Since the beginning of his campaign, there has been a clear discrepancy in media outrage over Zemmour’s talking points– concepts based on the French Identitarian movement and the ‘Great Replacement’– and actual support for him and his party 'Reconquête'. isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio…

🚨 A new ISD report reveals the extent of the pro-Islamic State media ecosystem that exists across social media platforms. Read all about it 👇
isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio… Pro-Islamic State outlets are operating multi-platform, multi-lingual disinformation operations under the guise of “media”. ISD found 38 such outlets across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram, with a collective following of 108,268. isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio…

Today's Dispatch looks at pro-Kremlin rhetoric distorting and oversimplifying the history of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, discrediting them as ‘neo-Nazi’ and ‘fascist’ states. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… Narratives that justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine often exploit historical events and cultural memory, as addressed in last week’s Dispatch. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

Last January, @TheSyriaCmpgn commissioned ISD to investigate the extent of English-language disinformation about the Syrian conflict from 2015-2021. This analysis formed the basis of @TheSyriaCmpgn report, Deadly Disinformation, published 19 June 22. deadlydisinformation.org @TheSyriaCmpgn In today’s Digital Dispatch, ISD explains how we conducted our investigation. In short, ISD collected and analyzed over 900K tweets and over 34K Facebook posts from 28 actors known to spread false information about the Syria conflict.

Project Nemesis is a pro-Kremlin doxxing operation that has materialised online and in the media during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. ISD has investigated how doxxing, as an emerging form of information warfare, is being weaponised in Ukraine. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… In late May 2022, an organised operation began to spread across social media: the mass doxxing – malicious publication of the personal details – of members of the Ukrainian military, secret services, volunteers and international trainers supporting Ukraine.

Today at #BonnClimateConference, we release our landmark report analysing climate mis- and disinformation at #COP26 and beyond, and the repercussions denial and delayism are having on climate action around the world. isdglobal.org/isd-publicatio… For the first time in 2022, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change @IPCC_CH recognised that “economic and political interests” have driven “public misperception of climate risks and polarised public support for climate actions”.

In our latest Insights, we analyse how monkeypox conspiracies have revived debunked COVID- 19 narratives, adapting them to fit the uncertainty around this disease. 🧵 isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… We also look at how Australia’s self-described “freedom friendly minor parties” have taken a page from the US’s 2020 election fraud conspiracies to justify their own almost-complete defeat in the country's recent federal election. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

As the war in Ukraine continues to be fought on the ground, the parallel info war trickles along—and there is no clear winner. Most recently, some far right and hard left influencers attempted to link the Buffalo, NY, shooter to a Ukrainian militia group. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… The suspect in the shooting had a tattoo of a sonnenrad, or “Black Sun”, and also printed it on his manifesto. Thousands of miles away, a member of the controversial Ukrainian Azov Battalion was photographed with what appeared to be the same symbol. isdglobal.org/isd-in-the-new…

In today’s Dispatch, @timsquirrell looks at Dark MAGA, an aesthetic created by extremists with the aim of grabbing attention and uniting (and radicalising) the right. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… @timsquirrell The Dark MAGA aesthetic is about creating attention-grabbing propaganda by borrowing from other aesthetics including fashwave and the ‘skull mask’ movement. It also wants to introduce mainstream conservatives to more extreme material.

The Buffalo shooter has no known connections to Ukraine’s Azov Battalion. That hasn’t stopped some groups from across the political spectrum claiming that he does.

ISD explores who is doing this and what they hope to achieve. isdglobal.org/digital_dispat… Pro-Kremlin influencers as well as some on both the far-right and hard left are attempting to link the Buffalo shooter to Azov Battalion, a regiment of the Ukrainian army associated with neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology.