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Phishing. Hacking. Jacking. There's a lot of talk flying around about cybersecurity, but how do you know if you're staying safe online? Enter our Online Security Test. By asking only a few simple questions, we can figure out where you fall short when it comes to cybersecurity. Of course, if you do have something to learn, we can help with that as well. Let's get started!

Test Your Online Security

Cybersecurity Tips

Along with our security quiz, we offer a few easy tips to improve your online security.

Two-Factor and Multi-Factor Authentication

The easiest way to increase your cybersecurity is to turn on two-factor authentication, or, for additional security, multi-factor authentication. Although it may seem tedious,

Receiving a push notification on your smartphone or

Using biometrics like your fingerprint

is a great way to ensure that you are who you say you are.

Password Manager

We also recommend using a password manager which would create difficult and unique passwords for all of your websites and accounts. Don't worry, though- you won't have to remember all these passwords, just the password to your password vault, otherwise known as a master password. Depending on the password manager, you'll be able to:

Sign in to all of your accounts with just one click

Sync your passwords across multiple devices

VPNs vs. Incognito Mode

For a user that wants even more security, we recommend using a VPN, or virtual private network. VPNs are useful if you:

Have particularly sensitive data or

Want to use a server from a different country.

Rather than being directly connected to the Internet, all of your data will travel through encrypted tunnels to private servers. Wondering which VPN is for you? Pick out the best VPN for your needs, or start by reading our VPN guide.

Incognito Mode

Another, more simple option would be going in private or incognito mode. Keep in mind that incognito mode will only hide your internet activity from someone using your device, but it doesn't protect your activity from outside of the device. Companies, employers, and governments will still be able to track you via your internet service provider, the websites you visit, and your network.

Social Media

Social media may seem ubiquitous today, but have you ever really stopped and thought about what data you're putting out to the world? Many people faced a rude awakening when social media app Timehop had a data breach that affected about 21 million app users.1 Sensitive information like names, emails, and phone numbers was released, although private messages, photos, and Timehop data remained secure.

If you have any privacy concerns, start by making all of your social media accounts private. You may just think that you're just posting fun pictures, but information like your:

Location

Education

Email

Employment

may be exposed to the world. It's important to practice caution whenever posting on social media, especially if your profile is public.

Organizational Cybersecurity

For an organization, we recommend having a few people handle one account, rather than a single person through a personal account. If only one person handles an account and it's hacked, there will be no way for other people to step in. Jumping off of that, if an employee quits or is terminated, their social media access should be revoked as soon as possible. Otherwise, you risk having the former employee post something that could potentially damage your brand.

Aside from employees that have recently been let go, keep in mind that naive employees may be your biggest cybersecurity threat. In fact, over 90 percent of cyber-attacks are attributed to human error.2 Hackers' strategies include:

Phishing

Ransomware

Pharming

so it's important to educate employees on potential threats.

Software Updates

Now let's talk about your computer. Every computer should have:

Antivirus software

Anti-spyware software

Firewall software

downloaded. Concurrently, users should update all app and operating system software right away, as this might contain further security updates. As viruses are constantly being tinkered with, frequent updates are a must.

Cloud Storage

If you have cloud storage, consider that you're at an increased risk of being hacked. According to Symantec, over 75 percent of cloud websites contain vulnerabilities, nine percent of which are critical.3 We recommend:

Backing up your data to local storage like a hard drive

Closely monitoring the data you're storing in the cloud.

Online Banking Security

Finally, we provide tips about financial security, and no, we don't mean how much money you have. When it comes to online banking, users should

Consistently check their bank transactions to make sure every expense is accounted for

Make sure that a padlock symbol is visible before making any online purchases

If your browser is telling you that a website is insecure, it's probably a good idea to not complete your purchase, no matter how cute that dress might look on you.

We hope this quiz and tips will help you stay safe online! While digital security may feel like an overwhelming topic, in a few minutes, you can greatly bolster your resistance to cyber attacks.

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Phishing. Hacking. Jacking. There's a lot of talk flying around about cybersecurity, but how do you know if you're staying safe online? Enter our Online

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One morning in April, I woke up to 77 alerts from my family WhatsApp group. Usually, that many messages mean only one of two things: Either it's someone's birthday or someone has posted a video of their child singing a classical Indian song. This time, though, my family was talking about the coronavirus: One relative had sent a chart ranking the virus as less lethal than a dozen other diseases, and implying that it wasn't a global pandemic. Another had posted a video of a Gujarati-speaking man in scrubs telling people that a reliable, free coronavirus test involved holding one's breath. "If you don't cough after [the first] three seconds, you don't have coronavirus," he said. An aunt sent a message suggesting that everyone build immunity by drinking warm turmeric-infused water with ginger.

Psychologists have found that people are quicker to share unverified information with those closest to them, and they are more likely to believe fake news when it is sent by friends and family. These factors can turn family group chats into dangerous platforms for the spread of misinformation. Before the coronavirus commandeered our thoughts, careers, and freedom of movement, my family was just a scattered group of people popping in and out of one another's lives. We rarely discussed politics or climate change, and the most intense arguments occurred when parents attempted to outdo one another with pictures of their children skiing in Tahoe or running a half marathon in Switzerland. Now coronavirus misinformation has poisoned the usually mundane feed, as it has many family conversations worldwide.
Read: The coronavirus conspiracy boom
In times of crisis, people derive a sense of comfort from passing along information to their family members. During periods of high uncertainty, group discussion can give people the feeling that they have a sense of what's going on. In an interview with Science magazine, the sociologist Emma Spiro said that this process helps assuage people's anxieties, because it makes them feel as if they are making decisions "based on some communal group-level understanding of what is currently happening." But when the purpose of a conversation is to comfort, people become much more likely to send information that appeals to them rather than information grounded in facts.

Compounding this problem is people's increased tendency to believe misinformation when it comes from those with whom they have close ties, Cailin O'Connor, an associate professor of philosophy at UC Irvine, told me. Many people assess information they're receiving based on not just the quality of the information itself, but the degree to which they see themselves as socially and culturally similar to the person relaying it. "The closer you perceive yourself to [be to] someone ... the more you trust the information they're sharing," O'Connor said. "With families I would think, a lot of the time, that kind of closeness would be in place."
Read: If someone shares the 'Plandemic' video, how should you respond?
Family group chats are also likely to include people less familiar with social media and less used to filtering out the waves of misinformation on its platforms. My 80-year-old grandmother, for example, who lives in an Indian temple in Amish country, has an iPhone just for our weekly Google Hangouts. Once she's asked everyone whether they're okay, she hangs up on us mid-conversation. A 2019 study in Science Advances found that people from older generations tend to share misinformation nearly seven times more frequently than younger family members, even when factors such as education and partisan affiliation were taken into account.

And although people might recognize that their relatives are spreading misinformation, their close bonds can make speaking out difficult. A 2019 study found that only 21 percent of people surveyed in the U.K. reported correcting others who shared false or inaccurate information. That number is likely to be even smaller in family group chats, O'Connor told me, because it is inherently uncomfortable to disagree with those close to you-think of the way people dread having to deal with their argumentative uncles on Thanksgiving. "There is this psychological force of us all kind of wanting to conform a little bit and not stick out," O'Connor said. "Within families, it can be a powerful force. When someone is saying, 'Oh, I believe X,' it pushes others just to accept it rather than to say, 'Well, you're wrong about X.'"

The coronavirus-misinformation spread in my family group chat is often influenced by elements of our shared South Asian Hindu culture, notably the broad acceptance of homeopathic remedies. Sharlyn Vareed, a lawyer from San Francisco, has had a similar experience. She told me that some of her family members have been sharing and resharing a grid of "coronavirus-protection foods to eat every day," including aloe-vera juice, Indian gooseberry, and bitter gourds. She grew even more concerned when a cousin in the Bay Area sent a chart claiming that the Vedic flow would bring the coronavirus to an end on September 23. Many Hindus fiercely believe in astrology-at birth, some of us receive personalized horoscopes, outlining our future based on birth time and location. When I tried to schedule a baby shower last year, its date changed at least a half-dozen times because my mom believed that the stars were not aligned correctly. According to Radhika Gajjala, a media-and-communication professor at Bowling Green State University, sharing astrology and home remedies is a way of preserving a sense of culture. However, during a public-health crisis, an overreliance on these practices can have pernicious consequences.
Read: Why the coronavirus is so confusing
For me and some of my friends, one of the most troubling things about family group chats is watching our relatives share misinformation that demonizes groups of people. My old college friend Namita Dodeja told me that some of her family members were using social media to disseminate fake news that blamed Muslims for the spread of the coronavirus. The final straw for Vareed was when a relative sent her a doctored National Geographic article blaming anyone of Chinese origin for the transmission of the virus.

To squelch the spread of misinformation, family members will have to be proactive in flagging fake news in group chats, even if it leads to uncomfortable conversations with loved ones. Gajjala told me that she has noticed many members of the younger generation taking on the necessary responsibility of pushing back against misinformation sent by older relatives.

Soon after I had muted the WhatsApp group with the never-ending notifications, one of my cousins sent a message to the family saying she had read somewhere that the Indian government was monitoring private chats for misinformation, and would punish the administrators if they found evidence of the same. It would be better, she wrote, if we went back to pre-coronavirus birthday reminders.

A few days later, I called her to find out whether any of that was true. "I don't know, but it stopped the messages," she said, laughing over FaceTime from her kitchen.

It was only fitting that a piece of misinformation brought an end to the misinformation.

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coronavirus conspiracy boomin times of crisis

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One morning in April, I woke up to 77 alerts from my family WhatsApp group. Usually, that many messages mean only one of two things: Either it's someone's birthday or someone has posted a video of their child singing a classical Indian song.

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Understanding Information disorder - First Draft

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The promise of the digital age encouraged us to believe that only positive changes would come when we lived in hyper-connected communities able to access any information we needed with a click or a swipe. But this idealized vision has been swiftly replaced by a recognition that our information ecosy…

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Understanding Information disorder

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11 Social Media Red Flags Parents Should Know About

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Find out which social media features are cause for concern -- no matter which app your kid is using. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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"It’s about REcontextualizing

There’s a theme that runs through all of these moves: they are about reconstructing the necessary context to read, view, or listen to digital content effectively."

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Don’t believe what you see – digging deeper for the truth – Linking Learning

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How can students get better at sorting truth from fiction from everything in between? At applying their attention to the things that matter? At amplifying better treatments of issues, and avoiding …

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The definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.

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Memes come off as a joke, but some people are starting to see them as the serious threat they are.

In October 2016, a friend of mine learned that one of his wedding photos had made its way into a post on a right-wing message board. The picture had been doctored to look like an ad for Hillary Clinton's campaign, and appeared to endorse the idea of drafting women into the military. A mutual friend of ours found the image first and sent him a message: "Ummm, I saw this on Reddit, did you make this?"

This was the first my friend had heard of it. He hadn't agreed to the use of his image, which was apparently taken from his online wedding album. But he also felt there was nothing he could do to stop it.

So rather than poke the trolls by complaining, he ignored it and went on with his life. Most of his friends had a laugh at the fake ad, but I saw a huge problem. As a researcher of media manipulation and disinformation, I understood right away that my friend had become cannon fodder in a "meme war"-the use of slogans, images, and video on social media for political purposes, often employing disinformation and half-truths.

While today we tend to think of memes as funny images online, Richard Dawkins coined the term back in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene, where he described how culture is transmitted through generations. In his definition, memes are "units of culture" spread through the diffusion of ideas. Memes are particularly salient online because the internet crystallizes them as artifacts of communication and accelerates their distribution through subcultures.

Importantly, as memes are shared they shed the context of their creation, along with their authorship. Unmoored from the trappings of an author's reputation or intention, they become the collective property of the culture. As such, memes take on a life of their own, and no one has to answer for transgressive or hateful ideas.

And while a lot of people think of memes as harmless entertainment-funny, snarky comments on current events-we're far beyond that now. Meme wars are a consistent feature of our politics, and they're not just being used by internet trolls or some bored kids in the basement, but by governments, political candidates, and activists across the globe. Russia used memes and other social-media tricks to influence the US election in 2016, using a troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency to seed pro-Trump and anti-Clinton content across various online platforms. Both sides in territorial conflicts like those between Hong Kong and China, Gaza and Israel, and India and Pakistan are using memes and viral propaganda to sway both local and international sentiment.

In 2007, for example, as he was campaigning for president, John McCain jokingly started to sing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' popular song "Barbara Ann." McCain, an Iran hawk, was talking up a possible war using the well-worn tactic of humor and familiarity: easy to dismiss as a joke, yet serving as a scary reminder of US military power. But it became a political liability for him. The slogan was picked up by civilian meme-makers, who spread and adapted it until it went viral. His opponent, Barack Obama, in essence got unpaid support from people who were better at creating persuasive content than his own campaign staff.

The viral success of memes has led governments to try imitating the genre in their propaganda. These campaigns are often aimed at the young, like the US Army's social-media-focused "Warriors Wanted" program, or the British Army campaign that borrows the visual language of century-old recruiting posters to make fun of millennial stereotypes. These drew ridicule when they were launched earlier this year, but they did boost recruitment.

However, using memes this way misses the point entirely. As mentioned, great memes are authorless. They move about the culture without attribution.

Much more authentic military meme campaigns are coming from soldiers themselves, such as the memes referencing the bungling idiot known simply as "Carl." US service members and veterans run websites that host jokes and images detailing the reality of military life. Yet these serve a purpose not so different from that of official propaganda. They often feature heavily armed soldiers and serve to highlight, even in jokes, the tremendous destructive capacity of the armed forces. In turn, such memes have been turned into commercial marketing campaigns, such as one for the veteran-owned clothing company Valhalla Wear.

My friend's picture was appropriated for a memetic operation that aimed to associate Hillary Clinton with a revival of the draft.

Recognizing this power of memes generated by ordinary people to serve a state's propaganda narrative, in 2005 a Marine Corps major named Michael Prosser wrote a master's thesis titled "Memetics-A Growth Industry in US Military Operations," in which he called for the formation of a meme warfare center that would enroll people to produce and share memes as a way of swaying public opinion.

Prosser's idea didn't come to fruition, but the US government did come to recognize memetics as a threat. Beginning in 2011, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency offered $42 million in grants for research into what it called "social media in strategic communications," with the hope that the government could detect "purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation" and create countermessaging to fight it.

Yet that research didn't prepare DARPA for Russia's 2016 disinformation campaign. Its extent was uncovered only by reporters and academics. That revealed a fatal flaw in national security: foreign agents are nearly impossible to detect when they hide within the civilian population. Unless social-media companies cooperate with the state to monitor attacks, this tactic remains in play.

My friend's wedding photo provides a good illustration of how something as seemingly trivial as a meme can be turned into a powerful political weapon. In 2016, a Reddit message board, r/The_Donald, was a well-known meme factory for all things Trump. Imagery and sloganeering were beta-tested and refined there before being deployed by swarms of accounts on social-media platforms. Famous viral slogans launched from The_Donald included those having to do with "Pizzagate" and the Seth Rich murder conspiracy.

My friend's picture was appropriated for a memetic warfare operation called #DraftMyWife or #DraftOurDaughters, which aimed to falsely associate Hillary Clinton with a revival of the draft. The strategy was simple: the perpetrators took imagery from Clinton's official digital campaign materials, as well as pictures online like my friend's, and altered them to make it look as if Clinton would draft women into the military if she became president. Someone who saw one of these fake campaign ads and then searched online would find that Clinton had in fact spoken in June 2016 in support of a bill that included a provision making women eligible to be drafted-but only in case of a national emergency. The bill was passed, but it was later changed to remove that requirement. This is what made #DraftMyWife sneaky-it was based on a kernel of truth.

Memes like this often use a process called "trading up the chain," pioneered by media entrepreneur Ryan Holiday, who describes the method in his book Trust Me, I'm Lying. Campaigns begin with posts in blogs or other news outlets with low standards. If all goes well, somebody notable will inadvertently spread the disinformation by tweet, which then leads to coverage in bigger and more reputable outlets. #DraftMyWife was outed fairly early on as a hoax and got debunked in the Washington Post, the Guardian, and elsewhere. The problem is, taking the trouble to correct disinformation campaigns like these can satisfy the goal of spreading the meme as far as possible-a process called amplification.

Memes online make hoaxes and psychological operations easy to pull off on an international scale. We should view them as a serious threat. The good news is that a bill in the works in the US Congress would form a national commission to assess the threat posed by foreign and domestic actors manipulating social media to cause harm.

Just focusing on those actors misses the point, though, for much the same reason those meme-inspired military recruiting campaigns missed the point. Memetic warfare works only if those waging it can rely on massive public participation to spread the memes and obscure their original authors. So rather than going after the meme creators, politicians and institutions looking to counter meme war might do better to strengthen the institutions that create and distribute reliable information-the media, academia, nonpartisan government agencies, and so on-while US cyber-defense works with the platform companies to root out influence operations.

And if that doesn't work, blame Carl.

Joan Donovan leads the Technology and Social Change Research Project in the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

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How memes got weaponized: A short history

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In October 2016, a friend of mine learned that one of his wedding photos had made its way into a post on a right-wing message board. The picture had been doctored to look like an ad for Hillary Clinton's campaign, and appeared to endorse the idea of drafting women into the military.

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As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we face the challenge of an overabundance of information related to the virus. Some of this information may be false and potentially harmful.

Inaccurate information spreads widely and at speed, making it more difficult for the public to identify verified facts and advice from trusted sources, such as their local health authority or WHO.

However, everyone can help to stop the spread. If you see content online that you believe to be false or misleading, you can report it to the hosting social media platform.

WHO works with the Government of the United Kingdom to tackle misinformation

In the context of the strategic partnership with the Government of the United Kingdom, WHO has joined forces with its communications teams to raise awareness of misinformation around COVID-19 and encourage individuals to report false or misleading content online.

This cooperation started with the joint Stop the Spread campaign in May-June 2020, which encouraged the use of trusted sources such as WHO and national health authorities for accurate COVID-19 information. The new phase of the joint campaign focuses on proactively identifying and reporting potentially wrong or misleading information, as part of WHO's efforts to address the spread of inaccurate and harmful information during the pandemic.

Learn more about inaccurate information on theWHO myth busters pages.

Visit our infodemiology pages to familiarize yourself with this emerging field of science.

Play Go Viral! to uncover the latest tactics used to spread false information, build your resistance to misinformation and help stop the spread of COVID-19. Go Viral! is brought to you by the Government of the United Kingdom and the University of Cambridge.

Learn more about cyber security.

Common COVID-19 vaccine misconceptions addressed

A year into the pandemic, vaccines are being rolled out, and information about them (some reliable and some not), is everywhere. In response, the Government of the United Kingdom and WHO have produced a digital series to address common misconceptions circulating online and explain the safety of approved COVID-19 vaccines.

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As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we face the challenge of an overabundance of information related to the virus. Some of this information may be false and potentially harmful. However, everyone can help to stop the spread.

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View of The Problems with Immersive Advertising: In AR/VR, Nobody Knows You Are an Ad | Journal of Online Trust and Safety

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The currency of the New Economy won't be money, but attention-a radical theory of value.

As is now obvious, the economies of the industrialized nations-and especially that of the US-have shifted dramatically. We've turned a corner toward an economy where an increasing number of workers are no longer involved directly in the production, transportation, and distribution of material goods, but instead earn their living managing or dealing with information in some form. Most call this an "information economy."

Yet, ours is not truly an information economy. By definition, economics is the study of how a society uses its scarce resources. And information is not scarce-especially on the net, where it is not only abundant, but overflowing. We are drowning in information, yet constantly increasing our generation of it. So a key question arises: Is there something else that flows through cyberspace, something that is scarce and desirable? There is. No one would put anything on the internet without the hope of obtaining some. It's called attention. And the economy of attention-not information-is the natural economy of cyberspace.

Attention has its own behavior, its own dynamics, its own consequences. An economy built on it will be different than the familiar material-based one. For the past decade I have been exploring how this new system will work. This article is a rough outline of where we are headed.

Technically, at least, information and its flow can be accurately detected and counted (in bits, bytes, and baud rates) by simple electronic devices. Attention is more mysterious, a process that can occur only in a mind, yet somehow it moves out into the world as well. If you're in a phone conversation, your attention goes to the party at the other end of the line. If you're chatting over the net, your attention flows through it. The flow may be metaphoric, but it is a metaphor of uncommon depth. Phrases such as "pay attention" and "I can't give you my full attention right now" trip easily off our tongues-almost as if this state of awareness were a substance.

"Attention," write Thomas Mandel and Gerard Van der Leun in their 1996 book Rules of the Net, "is the hard currency of cyberspace." They're dead on. As the net becomes an increasingly strong presence in the overall economy, the flow of attention will not only anticipate the flow of money, but eventually replace it altogether.

Though it might sound peculiar at first, attention as the basis of a new economy really does work. To begin with, attention addresses a fundamental human desire. Let's suppose you woke up one morning, well supplied with food and other material essentials, but invisible and inaudible, unable to get noticed in any way at all. At first, it could be quite amusing to spy and eavesdrop, to see what you're not supposed to. But no matter what you discovered, not being able to share your encounters with anyone would soon become torture-itself a pain you couldn't express to anyone. Living without feedback, even in the lap of luxury, would be for all but a few recluses barely living at all.

Some minimum of attention is essential. While many of us crave huge amounts of recognition, the lure is not merely fame or a place in history. It's also praise from the people around you for what you do. The internet is an amazing expression of these desires. People log on to connect with others, gossip, debate, advise, and learn about those like or unlike themselves. They log on to exchange attention. And, not surprisingly, anyone who has spent an appreciable amount of time on the net has advice about paying attention. In his online book Virtual Community, Howard Rheingold lays out two guidelines: "Rule Number One is to pay attention. Rule Number Two might be: Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention."

But how does attention come to dominate the emerging economy? Any conventional economist will tell you that ordinary material products are scarce and presumably always will be. Technically, that might be true, but in practice, mass production spews forth so much that there's a shift in emphasis away from the material desires that dominated the old economy. For many people in the US, Western Europe, Japan, and a growing list of other places, the materials needed for basic living are more than abundant. To take one small example, in the US food is so cheap and plentiful that eating too much is considered more of a concern than getting too little.

Attention is different. It really is scarce, and the total amount per capita is strictly limited. To see why, consider yours, right now. It's going to these words. No matter how brilliant or savvy at multitasking you are, you can't be focusing on very much else. Ultimately then, the attention economy is a zero-sum game. What one person gets, someone else is denied.

As it happens, I have conflicting feelings about what this implies. I happen to favor equality-equal distribution of the world's wealth. But I also like getting recognition. I can't have it both ways. The size of the attention pie can grow as more and more people join the world audience, but the size of the average slice can't. Real attention to you, meaning minds focusing on you, is always limited by the number of minds there are. The more minds, the more attention-but also the more who might want attention. The total available attention per capita (per mind) is simply not going to change.

Howard Rheingold offers two guidelines on attention. Rule One: Pay attention. Rule Two: Pay attention to where you pay attention.

To summarize, attention can ground an economy because it is a fundamental human desire and is intrinsically, unavoidably scarce. It can be a rich and complex economy because attention comes in many forms: love, recognition, heeding, obedience, thoughtfulness, caring, praising, watching over, attending to one's desires, aiding, advising, critical appraisal, assistance in developing new skills, et cetera. An army sergeant ordering troops doesn't want the kind of attention Madonna seeks. And neither desires the sort I do as I write this. There are also many ways to capture attention: via your thoughts, inventions, self-revelations, expressions, performances, artistic creations, achievements, pleas, and arresting appearances.

There is one further wrinkle. Attention goes both ways, even when information doesn't. Suppose you run into Sam, an old acquaintance. The dialog might go: "How are you?" "Just fine." You may not be any wiser for the small talk, but you've exchanged attention. If you truly want your question answered, Sam's honest reply would be attentive to your desire to know. Each time someone focuses directly or indirectly on anybody else, that can be thought of as a "transaction" in this new economy-a transaction that usually doesn't involve money.

What about this transaction now, where attention flows from a reading audience to an individual? Is it also flowing from me to you? In reality it's not, but if I don't make you feel that I'm writing for you to some extent, what would keep you reading? Whenever you pay attention to someone, you have to be getting at least some illusory attention back.

The key point about the various forms and avenues of attention is that while we each want it to some extent, it does not arrive in equal measure. This explains why many of us are working harder and harder to get some, and why we eagerly latch onto technologies such as the internet and the Web. Cyberspace affords new opportunities for capturing attention that might otherwise dissipate. It promises nearly everyone a chance at attention from millions, the potential to be noticed by the largest possible audience-or by an audience of peers whose attention we value most. But the net also ups the ante, increasing the relentless pressure to get some fraction of this limited resource. At the same time, it generates ever greater demands on each of us to pay what scarce attention we can to others.

Keeping attention transactions equitable in the future will be no easier than keeping cash transactions equitable today. A spendthrift will allow a few people to monopolize her attention. Or she may even lavish it on someone who can't give it back-say, Elvis, or an ancestor. Remember Rheingold's advice: Pay attention to where you pay attention.

That's because the attention economy is a star system, where Elvis has an advantage. The relationship between stars and fans is central. Even without cyberspace, celebrities in show business, politics, and every other discipline accumulate huge amounts of notice. Over a billion tune into TV specials like the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. TV networks claim that two and half billion people watched the funeral of Princess Diana.

But suppose you aren't a star like Elvis or Princess Di. Does that mean you'll be impoverished in the coming economy? Maybe not. Cyberspace offers a much more effective means of continuing and completing attention transactions, as well as opening up more possibilities to almost everyone. Whoever you are, however you express yourself, you can now have a crack at the global audience. Most likely you will also see people picking stars (and microstars) and becoming part of their "entourages." In cyberspace, this might mean you set up and run a fan site, or help design or maintain a complex cybercommunity, such as Geocities, where subsections of the site have their own webmasters. If you're a software programmer, for example, you might seek out some visionary codemaster who excites you. She will probably build a rather large entourage, and since you are in her circle, some of that attention will be diverted to you, the upcoming microstar.

Attention flows not only from fan to star, but in a hyperlinked way it can be passed from star to star, or fan to fan. A growing variety of attention types can bounce along through cyberspace: personal advice, suggestions, connections, editing, assistance in self-expression, responses, acclaim, or new software designed especially for your purposes. More gets more. Someone can pay you attention by helping you track down a specific fact (or create some special effect) that will help you get still more notice. Of course, you can earn negative attention as well, such as flaming, shaming, and outright hatred. But as many a disobedient child knows, negative attention can be better than none at all. On the Web, if you're adept, you can use notoriety to bring more notice to yourself.

And here's where it gets interesting: attention can't be bought. When advertisers pay for an ad, for example, they are guaranteed only a chance at an audience's notice. Audience members learn to ignore or turn off all but the most interesting ads, and even then they may not focus on what's being advertised. In fact, as the attention economy becomes dominant, the advertising industry won't exist as it does today, since its point is to induce people to spend money. In the future, ads will exist only to attract and direct attention, because money will be obsolete.

Let me attempt to make this outlandish thought easier to swallow. To begin with, cyberspace is not that hospitable to monetary transactions. Electronic money (in the form of digital bits) requires a complex set of codes, passwords, firewalls, et cetera. Attention requires no encryption. It flows naturally across the Web.

Second, if you get attention, that means you have some control over both the thoughts and actions of those paying it to you. Think of a panda. When you started reading this article, you had no idea this black-and-white mammal would enter your thoughts. (Or did you notice a hint in the illustration?) Did you just turn the page back to check? Some readers did. Their action came under my control because of the attention they gave me. Someone better at this than me, someone who "enthralls" an audience, is in quite a real sense temporarily making the audience members her "thralls"-or, slaves. The very act of paying attention may seem voluntary, but often it is not completely so. There is a definite element of compulsion involved. It's no coincidence that people say things like, "I have to check out that Web site," "You've gotta watch that show," or "That book is a must read." And each of those activities takes physical as well as mental effort.

Already today, no matter what you do, the money you receive is more and more likely to track the recognition that comes to you for doing what you do. If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won't get noticed, and that increasingly means you won't get paid much either.

As the attention economy becomes dominant, advertising will exist only to attract and direct attention, because money will be obsolete.

This trend in recompense in the US has been documented in The Winner-Take-All Society, a book by economists Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook. The authors note that the star system we are accustomed to in sports, entertainment, and the arts has migrated to the professions. As a September 3, 1997, front-page headline in The Wall Street Journal announced, "CEOs are stars now." That's how they are paid, hired, utilized, and dismissed. They operate within their companies more as attention-getting motivators than bosses. The same goes for rainmaking legal partners, high-powered lobbyists, and academics. More and more they are treated as celebrities. When they leave, they leave like stars, taking their entourages in tow. At the other extreme, ordinary line workers, fast-food servers, custodians, and others who don't particularly stand out have found their relative financial standing eroding. In times past, you could be obscure yet secure-now that's harder.

But how exactly will a moneyless attention economy play out in the world of old-fashioned, but still-needed, material goods? How will attention get you, say, an automobile? Cars emanate from vast corporations. Can you really expect an entity like GM to pay you enough attention to build one for you? In truth, the process is not nearly so monolithic; no single company makes cars in isolation. Automobile designs are copied, reverse-engineered, or licensed, and parts are often made by smaller outside workshops. Much of the advice, planning, and management comes from outside consultants. The car is no longer assembled from parts on one long assembly line; rather, subassemblies are often put together in different locations first. At every stage, more and more tasks are automated; that means more of the attention required to make a car occurs upstream as part of design and production planning.

With most people involved in the entire process connected to each other and to the rest of the world through cyberspace, it is not difficult to foresee a time when corporations will pretty much disappear, and when it will make a lot more sense to speak of a complex carmaking community, made up mostly of entourages surrounding thousands of stars and microstars. As is common among entourages, much participation would be less than full time, and the majority of members would belong to other communities as well, and even to other entourages.

Thus many people in the broad car community will also share membership in some of the same communities of attention as anyone who might want a car. As long as the person in question gets enough attention, she would almost certainly be able to draw enough from overlaps between her primary communities and the car community to arrange to be put into the driver's seat she craves. Assuming automation keeps cutting the total amount of actual attention needed to make each individual car, less and less stardom will be required to end up with one.

In cyberspace, there is nothing natural about large-scale divisions like cities, nations, bureaucracies, and corporations. The only divisions, and rough ones at that, are among audiences, entourages, and what could be called attention communities. Each community is centered on some topic and usually includes a number of stars, along with their fans. Attention flows from community to community. Below this primary exchange will flow the less important exchange of goods and materials.

History offers a parallel for understanding this radical notion of an attention economy superseding the use of money. At the height of the feudal order in Europe, everyone took for granted that tilling the soil would always be primary, and that wealth and property would always depend on possessing the right bloodlines to own title to land (which could never be sold). It was unimaginable to either serfs or nobles that nobility and titles could cease to be a means to wealth. They were all that counted then. Yet, as the industrial economy developed, food production became just another industry, and not even a highly important one. Bloodlines lost significance as well, except for pedigreed dogs and racehorses. Something that had hardly existed-money-became the basis of a new economy. And, incidentally, the most gorgeous armor, the most magnificent knightly tournaments, and the greatest interest in noble lineage all took place just as feudalism was on its way out.

If you prefer to think in more numerical terms, ponder this: transactions in which money is involved may be growing in total number, but the total number of global attention transactions is growing even faster. By attention transactions I mean occasions when attention is paid to someone who can possibly make some use of having it, or is able to pass it on to someone else. People trade attention at work, at home, and in between, day in and day out. Anyone tied into the Web might make hundreds of such transactions a day, far more than the number of monetary transactions they are likely to be involved in.

The rise of the attention economy has a parallel: at the height of the feudal order in Europe, bloodlines and titles were replaced by a new form of wealth-money.

The attention economy is something real, and like every real economy, it has its shortcomings. Among its problems are these: 1. The danger of huge inequality between stars and fans; 2. The possibility that increasing demand for our limited attention will keep us from reflecting, or thinking deeply (let alone enjoying leisure); 3. The possibility that we will be so engrossed by efforts to capture our attention that we will shortchange those around us, especially children.

Beyond these problems, there are many more changes to expect as the attention economy grows in power. Here are some that come to mind first:

As the flow of attention becomes more important, so will cyberspace.

The importance of stars will increase, with a corresponding decline in power for those who insist on anonymity.

A lessening role for large organizations, because they can't focus or trade attention easily.

The same goes for governments, whose role will diminish as well.

Almost everyone will have a personal Web site.

For a secure old age, you will not want to rely entirely on Social Security or any kind of investment, monetary savings, or pension fund.

In projects of all kinds, comprehensive lists of credits for everyone involved will become as common and necessary as in Hollywood films now.

To thrive in the coming century, you will have to look beyond money in any form and build a stock of attention for yourself as best you can. This will not be an easy current to swim in. But don't be distracted. The most gorgeous castles of capitalism, the most colorful ceremonies of payment and receivables, the most elaborate rituals around money and investments are now at their height, just as the era of the money economy expires. For better or worse, the attention economy will prevail.

Michael H. Goldhaber (mgoldh@well.com) is the author of Reinventing Technology and a visiting scholar at the Institue for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley. He's completing a book on the attention economy.

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The New Economy Doesn't Want Your Money-Just Your Attention

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Attention is a fundamental desire that's intrinsically, unavoidably scarce. History can help us understand this radical theory of value.

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"In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined."  

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Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality

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Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality

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How biased are you?

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If you have been directed here directly from another site, we ask that you read our homepage before continuing

Before taking the test: Please note that this isn't a survey, and these aren't questions. They're propositions. To question the logic of individual ones that irritate you is to miss the point. Some propositions are extreme, and some are moderate. That's how we can show you whether you lean towards extremism or moderation on the Compass. Your responses should not be overthought. Some of them are intentionally vague. Their purpose is to trigger reactions in the mind, measuring feelings and prejudices rather than detailed opinions on policy.

Page 1 of 6

Just a few propositions to start with, concerning - no less - how you see the country and the world.

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self-test of your position on 2 political dimensions

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A summary of climate-related online narratives in the lead up to Australia's 2022 federal election and the rise of weather-related conspiracy theories in the years prior.
By Anne Kruger, Julia Bergin, Esther Chan and Stevie Zhang

Introduction

Labor eventually won the election and secured a majority win against the Liberal-National (LNP) Coalition. However, a " tectonic shift" towards the Greens and a band of independents known as the " teals", who campaigned on the climate crisis, was striking. The Guardian reported that "a record one in three Australians voting for minor parties or independents" took place in what was dubbed a " greenslide" and a " teal bath ".

This report begins with a summary of climate-related online narratives in the leadup to the 2022 Australian election, demonstrating how extreme weather events fuelled conspiracy theories about the weather and against the government. Also outlined here are context from events just prior to the pandemic, as well as mainstream and online reactions to climate change protests. As a result, this article helps track the growth of environment-related conspiracy theories in Australia and can be used as a blueprint for other countries.

A comparison of climate misinformation circulating online in the leadup to the 2022 election with pre-pandemic climate-related narratives shows while conspiracy theories did emerge in the 2019-2020 bushfires, the 2022 floodings saw an uptick in the localisation of international narratives. Examples are given to illustrate how weather events are particularly susceptible to misleading, or false interpretation. This can then easily be picked up and turned into disinformation, which can in turn be shared by audiences who may unwittingly believe this to be true - creating a cycle of Information Disorder.

Climate change is a topic vulnerable to misperception, misinterpretation, as well as mis- and disinformation. Problems such as "false equivalence" in reporting are outlined, but at the same time strong solutions are provided that show how journalists and communications professionals can help audiences recognize tactics of disinformation in order to empower citizens. The report explains how to take a pre-emptive approach when reporting on weather events to develop proactive ' prebunking ' rather than a reliance on reactive 'debunking'. This approach is also useful to inform policy makers and public communications professionals.

Campaign or scare campaign?

The LNP Coalition opened their term in office with a horrific bushfire season and concluded with devastating floods across southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales (NSW). These natural disasters were a grim testament to the innumerable reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that warned the scale and frequency of natural disasters would only intensify. As the 2022 election drew near, the Coalition rolled out a series of scare campaigns on issues that included carbon taxes, electricity price hikes, and industries that would be left out cold should Australia commit to capping heat under a Labor (and what they termed a 'default Greens') government. Meanwhile, Labor launched a series of online ads, seen here, here and here, stating that a vote for the Liberals is a vote for then Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and his "climate change denial". Many of the "teal" independents received some campaign funding from a group called Climate 200, established by clean tech investor and philanthropist Simon Holmes à Court. However, they were heavily targeted - not so much for their climate credentials - but as "fake" Independents or Greens in "hiding".

Climate of conspiracies: opening the floodgates for misinformation

Climate denialist narratives old and new emerged throughout the campaign, which included unverified claims that linked extreme weather events to the so-called globalist agendas, purported plans by domestic governments to land grab, vaccination conspiracy theories, as well as narratives about voter fraud. Meanwhile, a national conversation about action on climate change mitigation and prevention was reignited by unprecedented mass flooding events. At the same time, conspiracy theories quickly resurfaced on social media and other online forums.

Flash flooding on election day made it difficult for voters in parts of northern NSW to access polling booths. People took to Twitter to voice their frustration, and in some cases accused the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) of blocking the right to vote. Falsehoods often start with a kernel of truth. In this case climate events did have an immediate impact on voters, but they were not orchestrated by the AEC. The Commission explained, "There comes a point with a manual, in-person event to the scale and complexity of a federal election where people's circumstances may prevent them from voting."

Misleading narratives can spread on social media to an extent that can hinder people's access to emergency information and assistance. New South Wales State Emergency Service (NSW SES) rely heavily on their social media accounts to distribute alerts, including urgent advice like evacuation orders issued during the March 2022 flooding. Anti-vaccination groups and individuals were, however, more interested in drawing attention to the requirement that all volunteers must be fully vaccinated. Posts on Facebook and Telegram were littered with comments and complaints that mandates were to blame for a perceived lack of resources for flood-stricken areas. Deputy Unit Commander of Wyong SES Tim Keown clarified that vaccination requirements were "solely a health issue" and online criticism was "interfering with our ability to maintain this page and get messages about urgent matters."

Flying under the radar: misinformation through visuals

The increasing intensity and frequency of wild weather events prompted the conspiracy community to misreference Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) rain radar maps in an attempt to substantiate (unsubstantiated) narratives about manipulated weather and government agendas. During the 2022 flooding, a moving trough or a simple system glitch led to rhetoric ranging from climate denialism to false claims that extreme weather was being beamed into target locations by the Australian government as a means to grab land and force communities out of rural settlements. The perceived lack of government support in flood-affected regions had also fed false narratives that communities were being deliberately neglected as part of a broader agenda.

A downpour of man-made narratives

These messages and posts are shared to other Telegram groups with tens of thousands of subscribers, with the posts themselves receiving just as much engagement.

Homegrown narratives spread overseas

Climate denial commentary on mainstream media channels (including television, radio and online) is regularly re-posted to the channels' social media sites. This agitates high volumes of online comments. The messages and rhetoric are further spread when noted by 'supporter' groups on social media locally, and can be recycled on the platforms of prominent pundits elsewhere in the world.

Inaccurate information about Australia's environment, agriculture and vaccination policies have been amplified to the world in this fashion by some US figures in the past. For instance, US show host Joe Rogan shared a false claim in a May 2022 episode of his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience that "they were trying to pass a bill that would outlaw you growing your own food in Australia." Similar false claims about Victoria's Agriculture Legislative Amendment Bill 2022 had been shared on social media in the week prior to Rogan's comments. This had been debunked by Agriculture Victoria: "The amendments will not result in the destruction of crops, nor will they prevent people growing their own food. Information circulating online misinterprets and misrepresents amendments in the Agriculture Legislation Amendment Bill." Rogan's remarks have an outsized influence globally as his show consistently tops Spotify's podcast chart in multiple countries, including Australia, the US and UK.

Another perhaps more harmful example of homegrown disinformation being promoted around the world involved videos purportedly from Indigenous community leaders about vaccination in the Northern Territory (NT) and US right-wing personality Stew Peters. Videos from November 2021 featured Aboriginal elders who claimed the government was physically forcing vaccination on Aboriginal people. Claims were made specifically about the Binjari, Rockhole and Katherine communities which were at the time in lockdown, but had been refuted by NT authorities, the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory (AMSANT), the Wurli-Wurlinjang Aboriginal Health Service in Katherine, as well as local residents. Despite the clarifications, the damaging claims had been spread further overseas by Peters, who discussed the videos in a segment titled in part "Aboriginals HUNTED BY MILITARY, Kids JABBED BY FORCE". Peters has shared in the past disinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines and conspiracy theories over the antiviral drug remdesivir and Covid deaths.

Prior to the pandemic

Hyperpartisan divisions and protests

Hyperpartisan climate denial and divisions in Australia were evident on social media during the 2019 wave of climate protest strikes and direct action. Some of these politically-driven claims about the climate crisis also included false and/or misleading claims as well as personal attacks. Founder of the climate strike movement 'Fridays for Future', Greta Thunberg, was the subject of international mockery and disinformation. Not only was a similar trend against Thunberg observed in Australia, but ordinary, everyday protesters advocating for more rigorous climate policies were also targeted. Themes used to negatively characterise Thunberg were applied to protesters young and old. Social media posts denouncing the climate protests included the hashtags #ClimateCon #ClimateFraud #ClimateHysteria and #ClimateCult. Comments discredited the protesters as being "paid" or belonging to a "cult". Similar comments were made on memes posted by then Liberal MP Craig Kelly. Older, as well as more radical participants were portrayed by then Nationals MP George Christensen as bludgers. Meanwhile, the fraught political debate on climate change in Australia and the government's response to "indulgent" environmental groups during the protests captured global headlines.

The reaction in Australia to Thunberg's September 2019 speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, where she condemned international responses to climate change, was punctuated by outrage over high profile figures such as columnist Andrew Bolt. Bolt wrote in a blog for the Melbourne newspaper Herald Sun that Thunberg was a "deeply disturbed messiah" - comments which received a response from Thunberg herself. An unofficial Facebook fan page for former Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott with over 36,000 followers at the time shared an image on September 26, 2019, of a Hitler Youth member as an attempt to compare likeness with Greta Thuberg. The same page also refered to the Sydney Climate Strikers who marched in September 2019 as "reminscient of Hitler's Nazi Youth," and as tools in the dissemination of "climate change propaganda". Meanwhile, a post by the Facebook page NSW Patriots Against the Extreme Left demanded the firing of "all Teachers [sic] and Professors [sic] who pushed communism & climate change 'scam' onto kids. In this vein a number of other pages also shared negative media commentary about the student protesters.

The Australian Youth Coal Committee shared an image falsely claiming to be of rubbish protesters had left behind in Sydney's Hyde Park. The post was shared at least 36,000 times as of September 2019, however, visual verification found the photo was not taken in Sydney, but rather showed rubbish at London's Hyde Park. Additionally, the piles of rubbish were the aftermath of an unrelated marijuana legalisation rally back in April 2019, which coincidentally had been falsely blamed on climate activist group Extinction Rebellion at the time.

One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson previously shared on her Please Explain Facebook page a photo with the hashtag #auspol, of rubbish supposedly left by local climate protesters in Brisbane in March 2019. A reverse image search revealed that the photo was - like the Hyde Park image - originally taken in London. First Draft used Google Maps' geolocation tools to ascertain that the photo was taken in London's Parliament Square Garden.

Bushfires: an information disorder treasure trove

Weather and environmental events are quickly susceptible to mis- and disinformation. This has the capacity to not only stop quality information flow about the environment, but can also be potentially dangerous during an emergency. After Australia's 'summer of bushfires' just prior to the pandemic, First Draft's Australian Bureau provided examples of how maps and images were shared alongside misleading claims about the fires. It included a summary of advice for journalists and the public on how to avoid falling for, or even contributing to the creation and circulation of misleading maps.

Emergency services were also the subject of online misinformation. As AFP reported, false claims swirled on Facebook that yellow and orange ribbons tied to front fences as part of a gratitude campaign for firefighters confused search and rescue efforts. Social media posts alleged that NSW first responders used these ribbons as a mechanism to locate persons in distress and mark fire hydrants. While that particular claim was false, different states across Australia do use ribbons and similar markers to track potential hazards. This example demonstrates how heightened confusion during times of crisis could facilitate the spread of misinformation.

Arson misinformation and disinformation feeds climate denialism

As well as misinformation, the bushfires were prone to disinformation. Timothy Graham and Tobias Keller from the Queensland University of Technology studied 300 Twitter accounts driving the #arsonemergency hashtag and found that it was rife with " inauthentic behaviour " - more so than the #AustraliaFire and #BushfireAustralia hashtags. The inauthentic behaviour comprised both bots and trolls spreading disinformation online. It began in November 2019 when the hashtag #ClimateEmergency began trending during the first round of bushfires. The researchers documented a rise in accounts attempting to replace #ClimateEmergency with #ArsonEmergency. The hashtag didn't pick up in usage until early 2020 when the researchers found it was pushed in a sustained effort by around 300 accounts. From here, it was adopted by genuine accounts as the narrative was pushed further into mainstream conversation.

Research by First Draft found attempts by disinformation agents to link the topic of arson in Australia to anti-Islam conspiracy theories. Some theories accused Islamic State of ordering its followers to set fires in Australia as part of a jihad. Prominent international far-right anti-Islam activists and commentators further picked up and spread these messages. First Draft has provided guidelines for reporters on covering extremism and how to avoid amplification concerns. The question of a 'fire jihad' was amplified by an Indian news outlet, which speculated on the possibility but with no data research, and this story was syndicated and further distributed internationally. Headlines are often the only thing a person will read before making up their mind, so care needs to be taken so that important context is not missing.

Confusion over the term 'arson' was further exacerbated after a New South Wales Police Force media release was misconstrued by some mainstream media as explained here by public broadcaster SBS. This had the effect of amplifying misinformation. A keyword search on Google for Australia and bushfires in that same week returned headlines from Australia and internationally that focused on the 'arson crisis' topic. Some of these reports further pitched this to question climate change.

Vox promptly debunked this: "What the release actually says is that legal action was taken against 183 people since November 8, 2019, for fire-related offences, including things like improperly discarding cigarettes or not taking enough precautions around machinery, i.e. not arson." The importance of corrective information was evident, as later that week, Google searches returned quality information reports that put the "arson" claims into context. However, by then, the damage was done as the false claim was amplified on the international stage. This included being referenced and recirculated by Donald Trump Jr., Fox News, as well as famous far-right figures and websites.

These news debunks were crucial, and a keyword search on Google for Australia and bushfires later that week returned these news reports (as shown in the screenshot below).

Other conspiracy theories drew on the arson theme to allege fires were deliberately lit in order to develop a high-speed rail corridor. A map of a blaze running between NSW and Queensland was cited as evidence that so-called shadowy elites were clearing land for a high-speed rail network between Brisbane and Melbourne. The conspiracy theory falsely claimed the non-existent train line was then tasked with forcing rural communities into urban centres. High profile US-based conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his InfoWars program pushed this theory and alleged the rail construction was financed by the communist Chinese. His program included callers who were purportedly ordinary citizens of Australia to discuss this as part of a New World Order conspiracy theory. The program had been reposted at the time on YouTube by the channel Free Focus (account now terminated) with an additional 770 views.

Fire memes were also used as a means to share disinformation as part of viral climate-denying strategies on Twitter, BitChute and Facebook pages. For example, Buzzfeed Australia noted at the time, posts " pegged to the Australian bushfires " had been among the best-performing posts on the "Climate Change LIES" Facebook page through 2019.

Problems and solutions

Comedian John Oliver illustrated the problem of climate change false balance in media reporting in his 2014 episode Climate Change Debate: Last Week Tonight. He used the then established figure of 97% consensus among climate scientists (which is now above 99%) who endorsed the evidence for human-induced climate change. Oliver invited expert guest Bill Nye (known as Bill Nye the Science Guy) to go "head to head" with a climate sceptic. In this segment, "in the interest of mathematical balance", Oliver brought in two extra people who agreed with the sceptic, and 96 other scientists who agreed with Bill Nye. The latter filled the studio space to overflowing, and thus showed the fallacy of "both-sidesism" in television and media reporting.

Disagreement over the climate consensus has however, also been used to spread disinformation. As explained by Vox, the famous " Oregon Petition " argued that because a large number of scientists - some 31,000 apparent signatories - rejected the hypothesis of human-caused global warming, there is no scientific consensus. However, the list contained no verification of the names and their affiliations. It included prank names, and the minimum qualification to be on the list was a Bachelor's degree in science - not climate expertise. While this consensus questioning provided the foundation of climate mis - and disinformation, research has provided guidance on how to effectively combat this technique, as explained in the next section.

Inoculation theory

The Oregon Petition discussed above has remained an effective rhetorical argument and tool for disinformation. Research by John Cook, Stephan Lewandowsky and Ullrich K. H. Ecker into misinformation on climate change "found that false-balance media coverage (giving contrarian views equal voice with climate scientists) lowered perceived consensus overall, although the effect was greater among free-market supporters."

The good news was, however, that the research by Cook et al "found that inoculating messages that (1) explain the flawed argumentation technique used in the misinformation or that (2) highlight the scientific consensus on climate change were effective in neutralizing those adverse effects of misinformation". The research recommended "that climate communication messages should take into account ways in which scientific content can be distorted, and include pre-emptive inoculation messages." The research also gave hope that regardless of political persuasion, "no one wants to be deceived by misleading techniques".

Figure out what information people need. Don't assume that your questions are the same as your audience's.

Choose your example carefully. If you can explain a tactic that is being used to manipulate, it will help build more general resilience to misinformation.

Wrap it in truth. Lead with the facts or a clear warning of how information is being manipulated. Remember that it is common for people simply to read a headline and move on. Use your space and words efficiently.

Warn your audience. Before you repeat the falsehood, warn your audience. This increases your audience's mental resistance to misinformation.

Explain why something isn't correct. This helps increase belief and arms your audience with counter-arguments they can use to debunk the misinformation the next time they see it.

Explain how you know what you know (and what we don't know yet). Explanation and transparency help build trust.

Make them shareable. If you want your prebunk to go far, design it to be passed on. Think about which social media platforms your audience is getting its information from and how you can use those platforms to their fullest potential.

Conclusion and recommendations

This report began with a summary of climate-related online narratives and issues in the leadup to Australia's 2022 federal election. There was a muted climate dialogue on the hustings from the two major parties, but in the final tally, there was a historical move towards the Greens and a band of independents known as the 'teals' who campaigned on the climate crisis. With meteorological catastrophes on the rise, this report illustrated how such weather events can swiftly attract a flurry of dangerous conspiracy theories which can undermine the work of climate scientists. The report included context from pre-pandemic weather events, as well as mainstream and online reactions to climate change protests. This provided a useful summary for journalists to consider not only issues of interest to voters, but a knowledge of how climate change issues can be vulnerable to mis- and disinformation. As First Draft observed throughout its coverage of the Australian election campaign, key policy issues such as climate were readily exploited by actors seeking to make political gains.
Jack Berkefeld contributed to this research. This research is made possible with support from Meta Australia.

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A climate for mis- and disinformation in Australia - First Draft

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A summary of climate-related online narratives in the lead up to Australia's 2022 federal election and the rise of weather-related conspiracy theories in the years prior.

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Twitter is full of "wonder science" accounts, many of them full of stolen images & misinformation. The recent viral tweet about the alleged void in space offers a good case study in how to spot the fakes. 1/5

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Twitter is full of "wonder science" accounts, many of them full of stolen images & misinformation. The recent viral tweet about the alleged void in space offers a good case study in how to spot the fakes. 1/5 https://t.co/7aamAGK8ai

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Twitter is full of "wonder science" accounts, many of them full of stolen images & misinformation. The recent viral tweet about the alleged void in space offers a good case study in how to spot the fakes. 1/5 pic.twitter.com/7aamAGK8ai
— Corey S. Powell (@coreyspowell) August 1, 2022

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Twitter is full of "wonder science" accounts, many of them full of stolen images & misinformation. The recent viral tweet about the alleged void in space offers a good case study in how to spot the fakes. 1/5 https://t.co/7aamAGK8ai

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Twitter is full of "wonder science" accounts, many of them full of stolen images & misinformation. The recent viral tweet about the alleged void in space offers a good case study in how to spot the fakes. 1/5 https://t.co/7aamAGK8ai

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Twitter is full of "wonder science" accounts, many of them full of stolen images & misinformation. The recent viral tweet about the alleged void in space offers a good case study in how to spot the fakes. 1/5

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You're looking at the future of fake news and propaganda.

Don't be embarrassed if you were fooled, even if only briefly. Technology to trick our eyes and ears is advancing rapidly. Teams in Germany are working on Face2Face, the type of face- and voice-swapping technology used to create the video above. Software giant Adobe is creating a "Photoshop for audio" that makes it easy to edit and manipulate what someone has said, as is a Montreal startup called Lyrebird. After you've selectively edited someone's words, you could take that audio and use tech developed at the University of Washington to generate a video of the very same person speaking those words, just to make it fully convincing.

The ObamaPeele video was created using another emerging technology: FakeApp. It's a free tool that's recently been used to insert the faces of celebrities into porn videos. Other people have put Nic Cage into Indiana Jones, face-swapped Nic Cage and Lois Lane, and created other cinematic crimes against humanity.

Part of the process for creating this video involved taking an original video of Barack Obama and pasting Jordan Peele 's mouth into it. It looked really bad and clumsy at first. But things got remarkably better the longer FakeApp was left to process a more believable amalgamation of Obama's head and Peele's mouth. That took roughly 56 hours and was overseen by a video effects professional.

So the good news is it still requires a decent amount of skill, processing power, and time to create a really good "deepfake."

The bad news is that the lesson of computers and technology is this stuff will get easier, cheaper, and more ubiquitous faster than you would expect - or be ready for. Even at this early stage it's proving difficult for humans to consistently separate deepfakes from real videos, according to Matthias Niessner, who runs the Visual Computing Lab at Technical University Munich and leads the research on Face2Face.

"Essentially, we have a user study where we asked people try to spot the difference - turns out we humans are not so great at it," he told BuzzFeed News.

This is why experts in computer science have been warning that an age of ubiquitous deepfakes could help usher in an "infocalypse."

Niessner, however, is hopeful that groups like his are making progress training artificial intelligence to detect a fake.

"On the positive side, we managed to train several neural networks that are indeed pretty good at figuring out forged images/videos. ... Ideally, we're imagining automated methods in a browser or social media platform to tell what's fake and what's real," he said.

But right now the technology to create effective fakes is widely available, thanks to FakeApp. The tech to spot them is not. This is where you come in.

There are basic tips you can follow to ensure you don't get fooled easily. If more people are equipped to spot a fake, then the world has a better shot at avoiding a dystopian hellscape where every movie stars Nic Cage, and governments, trolls, and companies manufacture perfect fakes that collectively make us lose touch with reality.

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How To Spot A DeepFake Like The Barack Obama-Jordan Peele Video

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This "deepfake" video starring Jordan Peele as Barack Obama shows how easy it's getting to create convincing audio and video fakes. Here's how to fight back.

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Because it's not just current events that can be subjects of misinformation!

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Finding and hunting Fake History can be quite tricky, but here are a few tips that can help you figure out if something shared online is true or not.This is a work in progress, I'll add more, update it, change things, etc.In part based on suggestions and input from you.

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Out of context or manipulated images are often used to push false narratives.  A reverse image search can help determine the source.

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TinEye is an image search and recognition company. We are experts in computer vision, pattern recognition, neural networks, and machine learning.

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Play the game and learn how to resist COVID-19 misinformation by mastering the strategies behind it!

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The Technology and Social Change Project was active from 2019-2023. The Media Manipulation Casebook was a major publication of the TaSC project, and will remain fully accessible at this URL going forward, but will no longer be actively updated.

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A digital research platform linking together theory, methods, and practice for mapping media manipulation and disinformation cam

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What to say if someone you care about is pushing conspiracy theories...

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What to say if someone you care about is pushing conspiracy theories...

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Writing in The Atlantic late last month, the political scientists Joseph E. Uscinski and Adam M. Enders observed that the coronavirus has created an environment dangerously conducive to conspiracy theories. "We have a global pandemic, a crashing economy, social isolation, and restrictive government policies," they wrote. "All of these can cause feelings of extreme anxiety, powerlessness, and stress, which in turn encourage conspiracy beliefs."

This past week, a widely discredited video-a 26-minute clip from a slickly produced documentary called Plandemic-circulated online. It promotes a number of harmful and false ideas, including that wearing a protective mask can make people sick and that the novel coronavirus most likely emerged from a laboratory. (Facebook, YouTube, and other companies are trying to scrub it from their platforms.)
Read: The coronavirus conspiracy boom
If someone you care about sends you a link to this video-or any piece of media that pushes a conspiracy theory about the pandemic-how should you respond? I put that question to experts on conspiracy thinking, public-health risk communication, and psychology, and their responses converged on some basic guidelines.

Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami and a co-author of American Conspiracy Theories, made an important preliminary distinction: Some people are sharing links to videos like Plandemic because they are curious and uncertain about the claims being made, but others are doing so because they're already deeply convinced. If you know someone is a "true believer," to use Uscinski's term, you probably can't do much to sway them. You'll have a better chance of getting through to the curious and the uncertain.

Whatever camp someone falls in, though, the general principles are the same. "It's always important to respond in a way that doesn't suggest that the other [person] is foolish, naive, or gullible, as much as you think they may be," said Joshua Coleman, a psychologist with an expertise in family relationships. "So rather than saying, 'I can't believe that you fall for this crap!,' better to say, 'I have heard others talk about that as well. And I agree, these days there's so much information out there, it can be hard to know what to believe.'"

After setting an empathetic tone, Coleman suggested continuing with something like this:

That video might be right, but I've been reading a lot these days that goes counter to that. Do you mind if I send you an article or video about that? It would be good for us to look at both and see what we think.

"In doing it that way," Coleman said, "you're saying you're open to being persuaded even if that outcome is unlikely-but you're also asking him or her to do the same."
Read: The real reason to wear a mask
"First validate" the fears people might have about the pandemic "and then pivot," Rachael Piltch-Loeb, a fellow at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, recommended. Along those lines, she suggested something like "I'm glad you brought this up. Those are some scary claims in that documentary. I am skeptical, though, because a lot of the things mentioned don't jibe with what I have been reading. Here's an article that I found to be more helpful at explaining these issues, and I feel more comfortable with the science behind it." If you send along more information, Piltch-Loeb suggested trying to find reliable sources that might still be familiar to whomever you're talking with.

John Banas, a communication professor at the University of Oklahoma, advised avoiding the implication that the other person's faith in the video is "a personal failing." You could instead point out the flaws in the current information ecosystem, he said, maybe with a reminder like "During this pandemic, there are people who want to take advantage of people's fears and all of the uncertainty surrounding the situation."

"One thing I might do," Uscinski added, "is to ask [about] the source of the information ... Often that [question] can point out very gently that sources matter, and that their source might not be reliable, especially if they have to repeat out loud that their information came from something like 'Conservative Eagle News Punch.'"

The experts I reached out to also had plenty of suggestions for what not to do in these situations: Don't lecture someone, don't get exasperated, don't insult them, and don't try to refute specific falsehoods. "It is likely ineffective to directly argue with someone on the merits of the documentary's claims," Piltch-Loeb said.

It's also important to know when to give up. "If they don't engage openly and in a way that suggests a willingness to compromise, then I would walk away and wish them well," Uscinski said of people with a strong belief in a conspiracy. "I would like all of the people I care about to believe the most authoritative information, but I don't control other people's minds, and attempting to do so might not work out in my favor."

If that feels like a defeat, Uscinski suggested some other places to channel your energy: "Support science and universities," "don't support politicians who lie all the time," and "push back hard" if a media outlet spreads a conspiracy theory.

You might also try, when having conversations with other friends and family members, to preempt any curiosity they may have about Plandemic or its ilk by warning them about the existence of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. "People need to be prepared to resist harmful persuasion," Banas said, "just like our bodies need to be prepared to resist harmful viruses."

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If Someone Shares the 'Plandemic' Video, How Should You Respond?

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Writing in The Atlantic late last month, the political scientists Joseph E. Uscinski and Adam M. Enders observed that the coronavirus has created an environment dangerously conducive to conspiracy theories. "We have a global pandemic, a crashing economy, social isolation, and restrictive government policies," they wrote.

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The Cranky Uncle game uses cartoons and critical thinking to fight misinformation. The game was developed by Monash University scientist John Cook, in collaboration with creative agency Goodbeast. The game is now available for free on iPhone, Android, and as a browser game.

The game was first crowd-funded and developed at George Mason University, with version 1.0 launching in December 2020. Version 2.0 was launched a year later, featuring multiple languages. Anyone interested in helping with our efforts to translate the game into different languages, please sign up to indicate your interest.

Building public resilience against misinformation
Developing solutions to misinformation is more important than ever in this post-truth era where science and facts are under constant assault. A key solution to making the public more resilient against fake news is inoculation - avoid being misled by learning the techniques of denial.

In the Cranky Uncle game, players are mentored by a cartoon personification of climate science denial. Cranky Uncle explains 14 techniques of science denial, from fake experts to cherry picking and a variety of different logical fallacies.
Using gamification to practice critical thinking
Cook's research has focused on critical thinking as a tool for building public resilience against misinformation. "The challenge is critical thinking is hard," explains Cook. "That's where the combined effect of humor and games are so powerful - they engage players and get them practising critical thinking through gameplay." The deeper a player gets into the game, the more resilient they become against misinformation.

This (non-profit) game will be available in classrooms and to the general public around the world, on iPhone and Android. We use gameplay elements such as interactive quizzes and reward feedback to engage players, taking them deeper into the game - the longer they play, the more resilient they become against climate misinformation.

Supported by:

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Cranky Uncle game: building resilience against misinformation - Cranky Uncle

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The Cranky Uncle game uses cartoons and critical thinking to fight misinformation. The game was developed by Monash University scientist John Cook, in collaboration with creative agency Goodbeast. The game is now available for free on iPhone, Android, and as ... Continued