Disinfo Docket 21 May

Hi! I'm Kate and welcome to DisinfoDocket. DisinfoDocket curates influence operations-related academic research, news, events and job opportunities.

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Highlights

🇺🇸 "Increasingly, foreign nation-state actors are running operations that exploit trust in local sources and impact state and local communities."

🔍 ASD identifies examples in which foreign influence campaigns target each of the 50 states. ⤵️https://t.co/wlf3HbSZOT

— Alliance for Securing Democracy (@SecureDemocracy) May 20, 2025

1. Russian hybrid threats: EU lists further 21 individuals and 6 entities and introduces sectoral measures in response to destabilising activities against the EU, its member states and international partners (Council of the European Union, 20 May)
2. The Right to Be Forgotten Is Dead: Data Lives Forever in AI (Tech Policy Press, 20 May)
3. AI is more persuasive than a human in a debate, study finds (The Washington Post, 19 May)
4. Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist (404 Media, 20 May)
5. The Internet Is Having an Identity Crisis — And So Are We (Katie Harbath, Anchor Change, 21 May)

🤖 Can you trust what you see online?
Join a free panel on visual AI literacy and misinformation — with speakers from @Info_Activism , @FullFact & @Literacy_Trust .
🗓️ 30 May | 13:00–14:30 BST
🔗 Register: https://t.co/s4x9dk3UBS pic.twitter.com/83tCgrd3qA

— Tactical Tech (@Info_Activism) May 21, 2025

1. Academia & Research

1. Exploring pandemic preparedness through public perception and its impact on health service quality, attitudes, and healthcare image (Nature, 20 May)

2. Platforms & Technology

1. X restricted in Tanzania after police targeted by hackers (BBC, 21 May)
2. Meta to start removing expired ads from political ad archive (Axios, 20 May)
3. Musk was once a political force on X. Now he’s back to business. (The Washington Post, 21 May)
4. "We’re the providers of information…but Google now wants to be the distributor" (Nieman Lab, 21 May)

3. Russia & Ukraine

1. Russia’s justice minister proposes ‘defense of moral values’ as basis for criminal immunity (Meduza, 21 May)
2. Last Check-In: The Russian Strikes on Ukrainian Hotels Silencing the Press (Truth Hounds, 16 May)
3. Trump’s Basic Misunderstanding About the War in Ukraine (The Atlantic, 19 May)