Disinfo Docket 3 September

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

Did you know that DisinfoDocket takes requests? If you have suggestions or relevant work that you'd like to see included, simply reply to this email and send us the details!

Highlights

1. How false rumours of Trump’s untimely ‘death’ spread on social media (Al Jazeera, 3 September)
2. How Disinformation About the Minnesota Shooting Spread Like Wildfire on X (WIRED, 3 September)
3. How safety measures failed when we asked AI chatbots to create false content (IJNet, 2 September)
4. How AI Upended a Historic Antitrust Case Against Google (Tech Policy Press, 3 September)

1. Academia & Research

1. Why scientists are flocking to Substack (Nature, 29 August)
2. Speaking at the Right Level: Literacy-Controlled Counterspeech Generation with RAG-RL (arXiv, 1 September)

2. Platforms & Technology

1. Should you have an AI companion? (Brookings, 3 September)
2. Google avoids break-up but must share data with rivals (BBC, 2 September)

3. Russia & Ukraine

1. ‘A gut punch in the middle of campaign season’: As the Kremlin pushes its own messenger and blocks rivals, even officials are loath to use the new app (Meduza, 3 September)
2. Corruption case against ousted cyber chief is ‘revenge,’ Ukraine’s security service says (The Record, 3 September)
3. Fake fact-checking: when facts are fiction and falsehoods are facts (EUvsDisinfo, 2 September)
4. Putin’s Propaganda War (The New York Times, 3 September)