Docket+ 26 May

Hi! I'm Victoria and welcome to DisinfoDocket. Docket+ is a weekly roundup of the latest influence operations-related academic research, events and job opportunities.

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Highlights

1. Russian Foundation, Aimed at Helping ‘Compatriots’ Abroad, Supports Spies, Criminals, and Propagandists (OCCRP, 21 May)
   1. Russian State-Backed Foundation Paid Allies in the EU Despite Sanctions (OCCRP, 21 May)
2. 5 Free Open Source Digital Tools to Combat Disinformation (GIJN, 21 May)
3. No Excuse for Abuse: What Social Media Companies Can Do Now to Combat Online Harassment and Empower Users (PEN America, 31 March)
4. Tariff Tirade: China-Aligned Network Poses as Grassroots Voices in Effort to Covertly Boost Online Narratives Critical of US Tariffs and Trade Policies (Graphika, 21 May)
5. Annual Report 2024 (Media Defence)

1. Academia & Research

1.1 Platforms & Technology

1. What Does Research Tell Us About Technology Platform “Censorship”? (Tech Policy Press, 20 May)
2. Are we getting moderator well-being all wrong? (Everything in Moderation, 20 May)
3. I'll believe it when I see it: Images increase misinformation sharing in Vision-Language Models (ArXiv, 19 May)

AI & LLMs

1. Evaluation of Machine Learning and Deep Learning Models for Fake News Detection in Arabic Headlines (SSRN, 22 May)
2. On the conversational persuasiveness of GPT-4 (Nature, 19 May)
3. The benefits and dangers of anthropomorphic conversational agents (PNAS, 16 May)

Availability and spread of information

1. Motivations to connect with like-minded audiences increase partisan sharing on social media (OSF, 20 May)

1.2 World News 

1. Commission preliminarily finds TikTok's ad repository in breach of the Digital Services Act (European Commission, 15 May)
2. Lost in Translation: How Content Moderation Fails Tamil Speakers Online (Tech Policy Press, 19 May)
3. The Conservative Political Playbook Driving the FTC Platform Censorship Inquiry (Tech Policy Press, 21 May)
4. Cumulative disinformation through citation: Investigating the longitudinal construction of Sweden as the ‘rape capital’ of the world (SAGE, 20 May)
5. “They’re trying to influence me to gain the more acceptable viewpoint”: The algorithmic imaginaries of politically activated social media users (SAGE, 22 May)