Training for educators. By EUDL

1. Face to face training for educators
The conceptual background of “disinformation”
Zalec, January 2020

2. open your eyes
WHO ARE WE
1

3. open your eyes
INTRODUCTION
2
• Where do you get your information from?
• What is disinformation for you?
• Can you quote different examples of disinformation?
• Who do you think produce disinformation?
• How does disinformation spread?

4. open your eyes
The concept of “disinformation”
3
Figure 1: Eurobarometer 2018 Survey, Frequency of coming across to information misrepresenting reality or is even
false
Source: Eurobarometer 2018

5. open your eyes
4
The term “fake news” is increasingly regarded as inadequate as it is too nebulous and
imprecise. Moreover, “fake news” is misleading, as it is also increasingly used by politicians “to
describe news organisations whose coverage they find disagreeable. In this way, it’s
becoming a mechanism by which the powerful can clamp down upon, restrict, undermine
and circumvent the free press.” (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017).
« Disinformation » has been prefered by the European Commission High Level expert
group and defined as such:
“Disinformation is understood as verifiably false or misleading information that is
created, presented and disseminated for economic gain or to intentionally deceive
the public, and may cause public harm. Public harm comprises threats to
democratic political and policy-making processes as well as public goods such as
the protection of EU citizens' health, the environment or security. Disinformation does
not include reporting errors, satire and parody, or clearly identified partisan news and
commentary.”
Fake News?

6. open your eyes
5
Therefore, instead of “fake news” we adopt the information disorder theoretical framework
(Wardle, 2017; Wardle & Derakshan, 2017), which defines three types of false and/or harmful
information:

7. open your eyes
• Satire or parody: no intention to cause harm but with potential to
fool.
• Misleading content: misleading use of information to frame an issue
or an individual.
• Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated.
• Fabricated content: news content is 100% false, designed to deceive
and do harm.
• False connection: when headlines, visuals or captions do not support
the content.
• False context: when genuine content is shared with false contextual
information.
• Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is
manipulated to deceive.
The information disorders
6

8. open your eyes
Satire
7
The article above comes from “Tatersgonnatate.com” which presents itself as a satirical
news website. Despite some clear clues suggesting that this is a parody, some people took
this article seriously and that’s why the US factchecker Snopes had to factcheck it

9. open your eyes
• Satire or parody: no intention to cause harm but with potential to
fool.
• Misleading content: misleading use of information to frame an issue
or an individual.
• Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated.
• Fabricated content: news content is 100% false, designed to deceive
and do harm.
• False connection: when headlines, visuals or captions do not support
the content.
• False context: when genuine content is shared with false contextual
information.
• Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is
manipulated to deceive.
The information disorders
8

10. open your eyes
Misleading Content
9
This article pretends that a mosque is going to be built on the site where the World
Trade Center got destroyed on 11th
September 2001. In reality, the project is to build a
complex with offices, apartments and a small prayer space for Muslim people.

11. open your eyes
• Satire or parody: no intention to cause harm but with potential to
fool.
• Misleading content: misleading use of information to frame an issue
or an individual.
• Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated.
• Fabricated content: news content is 100% false, designed to deceive
and do harm.
• False connection: when headlines, visuals or captions do not support
the content.
• False context: when genuine content is shared with false contextual
information.
• Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is
manipulated to deceive.
The information disorders
10

12. open your eyes
11
Imposter content
This article, which falsely alleged that “Emmanuel Macron was supported by Saudi Arabia
during the 2017 French presidential election”, was published on “LeSoir.info”, a fake website
which pretended to be the Belgium newspaper Le Soir. The real website for Le Soir is “LeSoir.be”.

13. open your eyes
• Satire or parody: no intention to cause harm but with potential to
fool.
• Misleading content: misleading use of information to frame an issue
or an individual.
• Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated.
• Fabricated content: news content is 100% false, designed to deceive
and do harm.
• False connection: when headlines, visuals or captions do not support
the content.
• False context: when genuine content is shared with false contextual
information.
• Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is
manipulated to deceive.
The information disorders
12

14. open your eyes
Fabricated Content
13
This article claims that Pope Francis supported the candidacy of Donald Trumpmp
during the US elections in 2016, which is something 100% false.

15. open your eyes
• Satire or parody: no intention to cause harm but with potential to
fool.
• Misleading content: misleading use of information to frame an issue
or an individual.
• Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated.
• Fabricated content: news content is 100% false, designed to deceive
and do harm.
• False connection: when headlines, visuals or captions do not support
the content.
• False context: when genuine content is shared with false contextual
information.
• Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is
manipulated to deceive.
The information disorders
14

16. open your eyes
False connection
15
This article is titled: “South of Spain: Refugees come ashore – beachgoers in fear and
dread”. However, the content of the article doesn’t repeat that claim about “tourists in
fear and dread” and includes a video which shows that the tourists were not scared at
all by the refugees.

17. open your eyes
• Satire or parody: no intention to cause harm but with potential to
fool.
• Misleading content: misleading use of information to frame an issue
or an individual.
• Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated.
• Fabricated content: news content is 100% false, designed to deceive
and do harm.
• False connection: when headlines, visuals or captions do not support
the content.
• False context: when genuine content is shared with false contextual
information.
• Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is
manipulated to deceive.
The information disorders
16

18. open your eyes
False Context
17
This tweet falsely suggests that this is a picture of “a child detained by the US authorities
because he is an illegal migrant”. In reality, the photo was taken during a demonstration against
the Trump administration’s immigration policies and the child is not detained at all.

19. open your eyes
• Satire or parody: no intention to cause harm but with potential to
fool.
• Misleading content: misleading use of information to frame an issue
or an individual.
• Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated.
• Fabricated content: news content is 100% false, designed to deceive
and do harm.
• False connection: when headlines, visuals or captions do not support
the content.
• False context: when genuine content is shared with false contextual
information.
• Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is
manipulated to deceive.
The information disorders
18

20. open your eyes
Manipulated content
19
The original picture of a meeting between Greta Thunberg and Al Gore was edited to
claim falsely that the young Swedish activist met George Soros.

21. open your eyes
The propagation of disinformation
20

22. open your eyes
• The process of writing a false story, adding an image, and sharing it
on Facebook is made even simpler through dedicated web sites. A
typical strategy is to create a fake headline, coupled with
misleading images or videos, to create an emotionally provocative
story, which entices social media users to share and click, on
platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp.
• Many successful disinformation campaigns tend to harness the
emotional power of videos by posting them first on YouTube and
then sharing the content through Facebook and similar channels.
Their reach and impact is then amplified by the platforms’ trending
topics algorithms, which frequently promote misinformation (e.g.
conspiracy theories) during major events and crises.
• In addition, successful propaganda and disinformation campaigns
often leverage a network of websites that post disinformation or
distorted, out-of-context news stories, designed specifically to invoke
emotional response and online engagement.
The creation of disinformation
21

23. open your eyes
Amplification on social media
• Fake profile and groups: the way in which fake profiles and
groups amplify artificially online disinformation is through
frequent and coordinated content posting, commenting,
sharing, and reactions.
• Online advertising: online advertising has been used extensively
to make revenues for junk news sites, as they receive payments
when the adverts are shown alongside the fake content.
• Micro-targeting: social platforms offer fine-grained ad targeting
(referred to as micro-targeting), based, for example, on job
titles or demographic data.
22

24. open your eyes
Genuine amplifiers
• The confirmation bias: people often orient towards and read
content and new sources which are aligned with their political
and other views.
• Homophily is the fact that an individual’s online news and
information sharing and commenting behaviour is influenced
by the behaviour of their online social connections, as they
tend to be usually like-minded people.
• Echo chambers are the result of confirmation bias and
homophily taken together, that lead to the creation of online
spaces where people are exposed to and share with their
connections predominantly information conforming to their
pre-existing beliefs and thus lack exposure to diverse or
opposing perspectives and opinions.
23

25. 24
Link: https://getbadnews.com/#intro

26. 25
HOW TO IDENTIFY
DISINFORMATION

27. 26
Times of Los Angeles vs Los Angeles Times
Media: latimes.com
Media: timesoflosangeles.com

28. 27
MSNBC.UK
Media: msnbc.uk

29. 28
Africa24.info
Media: Africa24.info

30. 29
Check the reliability of a source
• If you’re reading an article on a website you’ve never heard of
before, it’s important to dig deeper to try to understand who is
behind it.
• Look at pages such as “Contact” and “About Us” to see if you can
get more details about the owner of the website.
• Lack of such information is a sign that the source might be an actor
spreading disinformation items.
• Take a look at the URL of the website to check that it doesn’t try to
mimic the URL of a legitimate media.
• Try to see if the website has been quoted by legitimate sources (ex.
known media outlet) in the past.
• If there are names for some contributors of the website, you can use
Google to see if these individuals exist and have a good reputation.

31. 30
During a game, the Italian footballer Mario Balotelli got really mad about imaginary
racist abuses

32. 31
Racism: Balotelli again victim of racism

33. 32
Challenge the content you are reading
• Polarizing, divisive and shocking contents are often more likely to be
false and should encourage to be vigilant.
• Spelling and grammatical errors, sloppy punctuation, partisan
vocabulary are often a good sign that a source is probably not
reliable.
• Lack of clear context, quotes or references to some identifiable
sources should encourage you to dig deeper to verify the
information.
• Look at other media outlets and trustworthy sources to see if they
report the same story.
• If the information concerns another country, try to check if local
media’s reporting is similar to what your article describes.
• Verify that images are not used in a wrong context or manipulated.
• Check that the information hasn’t been already verified by a
recognized factcheckers.

34. 33
Video and images verification
In June 2019, President Emmanuel Macron was having fun while the French anthem was
booed by the Turkish fans before the football game between the French men national
team and the Turkish men national team. True or fake?

35. 34
Video and images verification
Shame on the French government for letting the police attacking protestors. True or fake?

36. 35
Video and images verification: InVID tool
Link to download the plugin:
https://www.invid-project.eu/tools-and-services/invid-verification-plugin/

37. 36
HOW DISINFORMATION
NETWORKS WORK

38. 37
Suavelos case
• A Facebook page “I support the police” shared an
article from a website called Suavelos about “the
alleged murder of an Italian policeman by two Italian
migrants near Vatican city.”
• AFP Factuel, a French factchecker, showed that the
story was not true and that the policeman was in reality
killed by two American tourists.
• The disinformation item is used there to try to increase
the fears related to migrants.

39. 38
« I SUPPORT THE POLICE » FACEBOOK
PAGE
• Facebook page created in 2017
• 172 000 fans on Facebook
• A name which can attract a large audience
but can’t allow us to clearly identify the
owner of the Facebook Page
• Publishes content from two websites called
Suavelos.eu or Bellica.fr
• Also republish content from other Facebook
pages called ”I support”
• A lot of the content is linked to controversial
issues (migration, violence, identity….)
• This pages likes pages called Suavelos
(Suavelos News, Madame Suavelos), another
“I support” page and a page called “Vive
La France
• Website: Jesoutienslapolice.com

40. 39
What do you observe?

41. 40
Cross posting and algorithmic hijacking

42. 41
Cross posting and algorithmic hijacking

43. 42
What is Suavelos?

44. 43
Facebook pages
playing on
emotions
Algorithm
recommendations
attracting
engagement
Content repository
Monetization
Support
Membership and
Activities

45. 44
L’InfoNationale.net: A website spreading disinformation
Linfonationale.net is a website which was identified in two French factcheckers’ articles as
an alleged news website copying and amplifying disinformation items.

46. 45
Crowdtangle: A tool to help you to see how a website is shared
Link to download Crowdtangle: https://apps.crowdtangle.com/chrome-extension

47. Facebook transparency: Clues about who is behind a Facebook Page

48. 47
Who spread a website on Facebook groups: Looking for abnormal behaviours

50. BONUS: REVERSE IP ADRESS

51. BONUS: REVERSE IP ADRESS

52. Thank you!
www.openyoureyes.info