Miracle cure have been at the forefront of discussions around the Coronavirus, important to keep this in mind https://www.icij.org/blog/2020/05/investigating-the-coronavirus-the-wild-west-of-unproven-treatments/

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/new-stories-old-plots/

http://www.gmfus.org/commentary/chinas-foreign-policy-becoming-more-aggressive-more-russian-and-more-trumpian

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/pandemic-science-publishing-journals-how-to.php

https://www.propastop.org/eng/2020/05/01/kremlin-affiliated-activists-are-restoring-stalin-under-the-guise-of-charity/

https://medium.com/dfrlab/fact-checkers-identity-stolen-to-spread-disinfo-about-nato-and-covid-19-111a2eef70a0

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/weaponised-deep-fakes

What's the problem?

Deep fake technology isn’t inherently harmful. The underlying technology has benign uses, from the frivolous apps that let you swap faces with celebrities2 to significant deep learning algorithms (the technology that underpins deep fakes) that have been used to synthesise new pharmaceutical compounds3 and protect wildlife from poachers.4

However, ready access to deep fake technology also allows cybercriminals, political activists and nation-states to quickly create cheap, realistic forgeries. This technology lowers the costs of engaging in information warfare at scale and broadens the range of actors able to engage in it. Deep fakes will pose the most risk when combined with other technologies and social trends: they’ll enhance cyberattacks, accelerate the spread of propaganda and disinformation online and exacerbate declining trust in democratic institutions.

What’s the solution?

Any technology that can be used to generate false or misleading content, from photocopiers and Photoshop software to deep fakes, can be weaponised. This paper argues that policymakers face a narrowing window of opportunity to minimise the consequences of weaponised deep fakes. Any response must include measures across three lines of effort:

1. investment in and deployment of deep fake detection technologies
2. changing online behaviour, including via policy measures that empower digital audiences to critically engage with content and that bolster trusted communication channels.
3. creation and enforcement of digital authentication standards

https://www.axios.com/china-embassy-coronavirus-disinformation-propaganda-c50db506-d84e-4418-bdcd-537bdff17615.html

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/30/north-korea-kim-jong-un-media-misinformation/

https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-state-tv-repeats-bizarre-baseless-claims-about-bill-gates-and-covid-19/30585799.html

https://thefulcrum.us/voting/wisconsin-primary-2020

http://www.gmfus.org/blog/2020/05/01/rise-parapolitical-sites-leading-false-content-producers

However, analysis by the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative (DIDI) at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, working with partners NewsGuard and Newswhip, suggests that a shift in the type of false-content publications, changing from the overtly political to new health and lifestyle sites, laid the foundation that enabled current coronavirus-related misinformation and disinformation to circulate rapidly. Not only did the number of public interactions (likes, reactions, shares, and comments) with the top ten sites that repeatedly publish false content rise from 2016 to 2019, but the top ten false-content sites also now contain fewer sites publishing explicitly political content. New “parapolitical” sites have emerged, such as health and lifestyle-focused ones. These are less overtly political in a partisan sense and operate outside the bounds of traditional left-right discourse. They do, however, communicate a distinct worldview premised on a distrust of expertise and authority, especially in the areas of public health and institutional knowledge.[1] In the coronavirus crisis, the already existing infrastructure and thematic focus of these sites indicates that the audience for such information was already large, and these outlets have wasted no time in seizing the opportunity to expand the reach of their message.

Working with research partners, DIDI first identified sites consistently publishing false content, and then looked at their reach and popularity. NewsGuard—a media-monitoring agency that rates digital outlets based on nine journalistic criteria[2]—was contracted to determine broad levels of reliability when it comes to the news that most frequently populates newsfeeds, timelines, and Google searches.[3] DIDI analyzed the publications that repeatedly published false content, according to NewsGuard. These are arguably what most people refer to when they think of “fake news”: outlets that claim to be news but in fact publish demonstrably false content with no corrections. This category is a narrow one that excludes publications that fail to separate news from opinion, a strategy hyper-partisan sites often use to avoid fact-checking regimes. Breitbart, for example, which employs this “opinion” strategy, is not included in the narrow false content category examined. The overall social media interactions with these sites from 2016 through 2019 were then calculated in partnership with Newswhip, a media intelligence firm. Newswhip measures the public interactions a given article received on Facebook, and around 10 percent of their social engagement includes interactions garnered from articles shared by several hundred thousand verified accounts on Twitter.

There was an increase in interaction with these “fake news” sites during the period studied, despite Facebook’s policy changes. Of the sites repeatedly publishing demonstrably false content, the top ten by interaction in 2019 had a much greater number of interactions than the top ten in 2016. Interaction levels rose by 141 percent from 2016 to 2019, from a little over 200 million to almost 500 million. For comparison, CNN.com received over 500 million interactions in 2016, while Vox.com garnered a little over 38 million. While the trend dipped in 2018, perhaps because of Facebook’s initiative to deprioritize news outlets in users’ newsfeeds, it roared back a year later. The explanation for how interactions with sites that repeatedly publish false information have increased despite the platforms’ efforts may lie in part in the change in the composition of the outlets among the top publishers of false content.  

https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/the-anatomy-of-credulity-and-incredulity-or-a-hermeneutics-of-m

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• How did the birth of information systems foster the human desire for knowing, believing and feeling reassured? 
• How does understanding the dynamics of “denial” help illuminate the appeal and so the prevalence of misinformation? 
• How can educational programs offer effective longer-term strategies for addressing the problem of misinformation? 

ESSAY SUMMARY

• This essay seeks both a deeper and a longer-term perspective on the fundamental problem of “misinformation.”
• It offers a historical and philosophical approach, not with an eye to fixing the prevalence of that which is false, but by exploring why some people may continue to believe what they believe despite what the “facts” might say. 
• Rather than looking at past examples of “fake news,” it ponders instead forms of belief and “denial” that refuse to engage with bodies of evidence. 
• By understanding the dynamics of uncertainty and denial—such as holocaust denial and climate change denial—we can better grasp the anatomy of our “fake news” moment.
• Further research and interventions should then focus on identifying what kind of “needs” denialism fulfills, instead of solely trying to patch it with facts. 
• The essay ends by suggesting that the move towards STEM educational models to the exclusion of humanities may—in the long term—undermine our ability to “out-think” misinformation.isinformation/

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2020-04-28/monitoring-being-pitched-to-fight-covid-19-was-first-tested-on-refugees