Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Disinformation Resilience Index

At the end of July 2018 a report was published giving the Disinformation Resilience Index for various countries, published on the Ukrainian Prism website. The organisation is a " a network-based non-governmental analytical center that specializes in foreign policy and international security issues". I have done limited verification myself on it, but at any rate the idea of Disinformation Resilience and the reports themselves are worth a look.
They say "The aim of this research is to assess the level of resilience to foreign, foremost Kremlin-led, disinformation in 14 countries of Eastern and Central Europe, including the Visegrad states (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia), Eastern Partnership countries (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine), Baltic states, and Romania. Based on an analysis of data collected by the EU’s East StratCom Task Force in its Disinformation Reviews, four basic categories of disinformation were singled out, namely: a ) unsourced or falsified claims; b ) non-credible claims with sources; c ) claims based on earlier unsourced or non-credible claims; and, d ) conspiracy theories." (p7)
The Index is composed of three factors (see page 16 of the report) (A) Population exposure to Kremlin-led media (B) Quality of systematic responses e.g. Media community regulations (C) Vulnerability to digital warfare (e.g. Presence of debunking initiatives). The Index is quantified for each country, and interviews and desk research were used as well to compile narrative reports for each country. Sadly, whilst Media Literacy is included as a section for each country (with media literacy initiatives being seen as part of the "systematic responses" indicator) they do not seem to have looked at the presence or absence of Information Literacy.
From this page http://prismua.org/en/dri-cee/ you can view online or (link at the top) download the pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: dog in Greenwich Park, July 2018

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