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Recently, an article by Seneff et al. entitled "Innate immunosuppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs" was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT). Here, we describe why this article, which contains unsubstantiated claims and misunderstandings such as "billions of lives are potentially at risk" with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, is problematic and should be retracted. We report here our request to the editor of FCT to have our rebuttal published, unfortunately rejected after three rounds of reviewing. Fighting the spread of false information requires enormous effort while receiving little or no credit for this necessary work, which often even ends up being threatened. This need for more scientific integrity is at the heart of our advocacy, and we call for large support, especially from editors and publishers, to fight more effectively against deadly disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information related to the journal "Progressive Librarian" and its publication. Topics discussed include library profession in the current political climate and information environment, opposition of administration policies of President Donald Trump by the American Library Association (ALA) and role of Progressive Librarians Guild in promoting the librarian profession.

Copyright of Revista de Comunicación 'Vivat Academia' is the property of Facultad de Ciencias de las Informacion de la Universidad Complutense (Espana) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents examples of the construction of a war narrative aimed not so much at accurately informing the public about key decisions for the state, but at ways of constructing messages to achieve strategic objectives, which do not necessarily prove to be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the submission interface, Step 4: Details & Comments, select "Yes" for the Special Issue option, and then select "Science Denial and Disinformation" as the special issue title. In particular, the special issue will aim to focus on meaningful work around science learning teaching and science education policy in the context of media (e.g., social) and information literacy. [Extracted from the article]

This article introduces a special issue of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis on the topic of truth and lies. The author discusses the prevalence of disinformation and fake studies in today's society and explores different psychoanalytic perspectives on truth and lies. The article provides a summary of each author's contribution to the special issue, highlighting their central themes and conclusions. The papers in the issue examine the intersection of psychoanalysis and liberalism, the role of truth and lies in psychoanalytic practice, and the interplay between reality and imagination. The authors emphasize the importance of emotional truth, mediation, and containment in distinguishing between reality and distorted perceptions. They also discuss the distortion of truth in contemporary society and the role of ideologies as defenses against uncertainty and anxiety. Overall, the papers provide valuable insights into the complex nature of truth and lies in psychoanalysis and aim to promote a culture of truth in society. [Extracted from the article]

This paper analyses the Canadian government’s foreign and security policy responses to Russian disinformation in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. It asks whether, how, and why the government has securitised the “crisis of Russian disinformation.” The paper first briefly reviews literature on the Copenhagen’s School’s “securitisation” theory and how it has been used to explain responses to other crises. It then adopts the framework to contextualise the Canadian federal government’s official rhetoric, and then to categorise government policies and actions. The sources consulted include government actors’ reports and stated intentions and policies from 2022 to 2024. Adopting a securitisation framework reveals that Russian disinformation has been rhetorically securitised by government actors as an existential threat to national security and democratic integrity which requires urgent action. Within a context of cascading risks, the government has taken a range of distinct yet reinforcing policies and actions, some more comprehensive than others. The paper argues that together this “pervasive rhetorical securitisation” and “ad hoc practical securitisation” comprise the Canadian government’s ongoing process of partial securitisation. This process is legitimising different methods of governance: security and warfare communications (to address threats to national defence and security), democratic resilience (to address threats to democracy), and, most controversially, blocking and sanctioning (to signal discontent to the Russian regime). The analysis further reveals that each approach has different benefits and limits. The paper concludes that the securitisation process is incomplete compared to the government's rhetoric, with no over-arching organisation or strategy. It outlines implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Russia's propaganda discourse on Twitter during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The study employs network analysis, natural language processing (NLP) techniques, and qualitative analysis to identify key communities and narratives associated with the prevalent and damaging narrative of "fascism/Nazism" in discussions related to the invasion. The paper implements a methodological pipeline to identify the main topics, and influential actors, as well as to examine the most impactful messages in spreading this disinformation narrative. Overall, this research contributes to the understanding of propaganda dissemination on social media platforms and provides insights into the narratives and communities involved in spreading disinformation during the invasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the seismic reputational risks now facing brands as two major sociotechnical forces converge — the rise of ideological polarisation and the emergence of AI's ability to generate synthetic media impersonating organisations. It examines how brands have embraced polarised stances on social issues to build deeper connections with values-driven consumers, especially younger demographics like millennials and Gen Z. By adopting partisan positions. Brands also become targets for ideological attacks seeking to erode trust. Meanwhile, rapid advances in generative AI empower malicious actors to disseminate disinformation, attacking brands with harmful narratives, misinformation and disinformation on an unprecedented scale and realism to do financial and reputational harm. The paper provides an in-depth examination of both dynamics. It explores how younger consumers increasingly demand corporate advocacy on divisive issues, forcing brands to navigate complex sociopolitical fault lines. Taking progressive stances risks a backlash from ideological opponents ready to instigate reputation-damaging retaliation. The paper also details the exponential threats introduced by AI synthesis technologies like generative adversarial networks. It explains how even modestly resourced attackers could soon produce unlimited volumes of fake content, misinformation and disinformation to target brands across all digital channels and media types. To address these converging risks, the paper recommends that brands invest in capabilities including monitoring sociocultural tensions, technologically authenticating communications, establishing early disinformation warning systems, educating consumers on resisting manipulation, crafting proactive narratives, practicing radical transparency and testing defences. It emphasises the need for holistic 'narrative intelligence' combining data analysis, cultural discernment and human wisdom. With deliberate strategies focused on verification, transparency and continuous learning, brands can foster resilience and enduring trust despite inevitable disruptions. The paper concludes that competence in navigating partisan debates and AI deception will become a competitive advantage in determining which brands lead in this complex future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial introduces the September issue and highlights four papers that are concerned with automatically detecting fake news and “phishing” attempts. The discussion is in the context of a recent proposal by the Australian Government to restrict the spread of misinformation and disinformation. It is noted that all the proposed methods use Artificial Intelligence (AI), suggesting that bias, which can be introduced by AI training processes, would be worthy of further research. The other papers are briefly described. This issue also includes an obituary for Harry Wragge, a former head of Telecom/Telstra Research Laboratories. We also note the passing of John Burke, an influential member of this Journal’s Editorial Advisory Board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having analyzed a number of published research papers, the authors of the article come to conclusion that manipulations in the scientific world can, inter alia, manifest themselves in the following forms: - substitution of the authorship, that is, replacement of the surname of a little-known author with the surname of a scientific celebrity (manipulation technique "appeal to an authority") subsequently distributing the now false scientific text on the Internet. This manipulative technique, in the absence of an authenticity check obligatory in such cases, causes a whole loop of citations and references in scientific journals of different countries, since scholars who cite the fake are mistakenly convinced that they are dealing with a genuine article from a respected author; the purpose of this manipulation is not to derive direct benefits for the manipulator, but a kind of scientific trolling: to prove to the academic audience that by falsely attributing the name of an author authoritative in the scientific world to someone else's mediocre text, it is possible to make other scientists take this fake for genuine scientific work; - the use of scientific works written in a foreign language (without correct references and citations) in their publications (manipulative technique of direct plagiarism) for gain purpose of appropriating another person's piece of writing, passing it off as their own. The present study has revealed an urgent need both for researchers and for academic journals' editors - to carefully verify quoted sources that may be false. Representatives of the scientific world, traditionally considered to be the most informed community, must not become victims of manipulative influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to test the hypothesis that the quality of social media bot detection systems based on supervised machine learning may not be as accurate as researchers claim, given that bots have become increasingly sophisticated, making it difficult for human annotators to detect them better than random selection. As a result, obtaining a ground-truth dataset with human annotation is not possible, which leads to supervised machine-learning models inheriting annotation errors. To test this hypothesis, we conducted an experiment where humans were tasked with recognizing malicious bots on the VKontakte social network. We then compared the "human" answers with the "ground-truth" bot labels ('a bot'/'not a bot'). Based on the experiment, we evaluated the bot detection efficiency of annotators in three scenarios typical for cybersecurity but differing in their detection difficulty as follows: (1) detection among random accounts, (2) detection among accounts of a social network 'community', and (3) detection among verified accounts. The study showed that humans could only detect simple bots in all three scenarios but could not detect more sophisticated ones (p-value = 0.05). The study also evaluates the limits of hypothetical and existing bot detection systems that leverage non-expert-labelled datasets as follows: the balanced accuracy of such systems can drop to 0.5 and lower, depending on bot complexity and detection scenario. The paper also describes the experiment design, collected datasets, statistical evaluation, and machine learning accuracy measures applied to support the results. In the discussion, we raise the question of using human labelling in bot detection systems and its potential cybersecurity issues. We also provide open access to the datasets used, experiment results, and software code for evaluating statistical and machine learning accuracy metrics used in this paper on GitHub. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As online resources such as social media are increasingly used in disaster situations, confusion caused by the spread of false information, misinformation, and hoaxes has become an issue. Although a large amount of research has been conducted on how to suppress disinformation, i.e., the widespread dissemination of such false information, most of the research from a revenue perspective has been based on prisoner's dilemma experiments, and there has been no analysis of measures to deal with the actual occurrence of disinformation on disaster SNSs. In this paper, we focus on the fact that one of the characteristics of disaster SNS information is that it allows citizens to confirm the reality of a disaster. Hereafter, we refer to this as collective debunking, and we propose a profit-agent model for it and conduct an analysis using an evolutionary game. As a result, we experimentally found that deception in the confirmation of disaster information uploaded to SNS is likely to lead to the occurrence of disinformation. We also found that if this deception can be detected and punished, for example by patrols, it tends to suppress the occurrence of disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to assess the phenomenon of disinformation and misinformation within the agri-food sector, recognizing the growing concern articulated by global authorities. The significant proliferation of disinformation and misinformation underscores the need to scrutinize various sectors susceptible to its influence, with the agri-food sector identified as particularly vulnerable. Consequently, this paper explores instances of disinformation and misinformation within this field, highlighting its potential influence, prospective impacts, and risks to both the economy and inhabitants. Employing a deductive approach, the author introduces the concept of disinformation, discusses global risks, examines the vulnerability of recipients to (dis/mis)information, and provides specific examples of disinformation and misinformation within the agri-food sector along with its inherent consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of ill information with or without the intention of deceiving or causing harm has negatively impacted agricultural development both in social and digital spaces. This has led to a lack of trust in adopting new technologies and practices, which has hindered the process of facilitating agricultural development. Although the study of agri-food misinformation is still in its early stages, this paper draws on a scoping review of existing literature and lessons learned from other fields, such as political science and public health, which have extensive experience in combating misinformation in social settings. The article explores how Farmer Field Schools (FFS), a popular participatory and community-based approach, can incorporate media literacy education and how a local agricultural information hub, platform approach and a relatively new approach called technology stewardship in agricultural extension can help those working in the agri-food industry combat misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms are fertile ground for spreading problematic information. This paper explored Library and Information Science (LIS) students' understanding of problematic information, i.e. misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, fake news, rumor, etc. associated with their ability to categorize these. This paper showed the relation between what students think they know and what they actually know in regard to recognizing mis-dis-mal-information. A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire among LIS students of all public universities in Bangladesh, and 426 usable responses get backed. For analyzing the data, SPSS was used to carry out the descriptive analysis, Pearson Correlation, and Spearman's Correlation Coefficient. The result showed that students were connected with social media platforms on a daily basis, most preferably with Facebook and YouTube. In terms of sharing or commenting on a post that was not completely accurate, almost half of the respondents are habituated with the aim of doing so. Although the basic familiarity rated by students themselves with the problematic information is nearly satisfactory, the capacity to recognize this information whenever it occurred in hands-on tasks was very low. There is a positive correlation among gender, study level, and frequency of using Internet and social media with familiarity with misinformation, disinformation, fake news, rumor, and malinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of identifying the scenario of the spread of misinformation in the second decade of the present century permeates the analysis of the work of the scientific community supported by technological, educational, and social demands. This issue has become even more relevant in a context of COIVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we investigate the most relevant research themes connected with misinformation addressed in Brazilian research in the field of information science, as well as data on the number of publications per analyzed journal, per year, main keywords, in addition to crossing different data collected in order to better understand this scenario, and the impact of the Pandemic on research about disinformation. This study used descriptive research in compliance with the proposed objective and bibliographic research as a procedural methodology, therefore, aimed at surveying articles in Brazilian journals on Information Science and areas of knowledge such as Library Science, Communication, and Journalism. We collected paper published in 28 Brazilian Journals of Information Science, with results between 2015 and 2021, giving a total of 114 papers. We have identified a number of core topics that are most frequent, allowing for an organization into thematic categories and subcategories. We understand that this phenomenon is not new and characteristic only of contemporary society, but must be investigated in light of recent facts that have driven the publicity of research on the subject. Allied to the misinformation scenario in the last decade, we registered the occurrence of events related to the infodemic and the pandemic responsible for changing the direction of politics, economy, health, and education worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: This article analyses the structure of hypertext and the world wide web through the contrasting metaphors of the network and the rhizome and applies that analysis to the epistemic challenge presented by fake news. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a critical and theoretical study of the development of concepts in information science. It outlines the limitations of the network metaphor and analyses the ways in which it has influenced both the development and critical understanding of the World Wide Web and its wider social and cultural consequences. The paper develops an alternative description of the ontological structure of the Web in terms of interrupted and dissipated energy flows. Findings: The paper argues that the Web is better described as a dynamic reorganization of the socio-cultural system that has no determinate boundaries and which is constituted properly in the spaces between technologies and the spaces between persons. Originality/value: The paper contributes to and extends research into the rhizomic nature of hypertext and the Word Wide Web and in understanding the role of metaphor in descriptions of hypertext and the web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The online Question and Answer community is full of a large number of science and technology topics, the discussion and dissemination of which play an important role in promoting the popularization of new technologies and cultivating public enthusiasm for science. However, the spread of false information and rumors weakens the community's positive effect, making the community more difficult for people to obtain useful information on such topics. Research on the influencing factors and governance of the spread of false information on science and technology topics has become the key to the spread of popular science. Design/methodology/approach: Therefore, this paper uses the Elaboration Likelihood Model as the theoretical framework to examine the role of the factors influencing the spread of false information on science and technology topics in Zhihu community on the information persuasion and the impact on public behavior attitude from the core path and the edge path. This paper compiles a crawler program to capture 12,893 response information under the "Metaverse" topic in Zhihu community as an empirical sample and uses text mining and conducts visual correlation analysis to explore the key factors affecting the persuasive transmission path of information on science and technology topics. Findings: The research finds that the content specialization, content consistency and content coherence of science and technology topics affect personal judgment from the aspect of information content through the core path and have a positive correlation with information persuasion; the number of comments, the length of the text and the publishing authors' influence from the edge image characteristics through the edge path are positively correlated with the information persuasion. Then, from the perspective of topic platform, government and topic participants, this paper puts forward a general plan to improve the information persuasion of science and technology topics so as to deal with false information. Originality/value: Compared with the small data set of the traditional questionnaire survey, the research based on community empirical big data is more reliable. The model takes into account the attitude and behavior of users and is more suitable for the research on the transmission path of scientific and technological information in the internet era. This research provides a direction for analyzing the text characteristics and development trends of information in the field of science and technology and is conducive to promoting the optimization of the network information environment and building a good ecology, with the spread of rumors about science and technology topics curbed and the governance of false information strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the utility of organizational system modeling frameworks to provide valuable insight into information flows within organizations and subsequently the opportunities for increasing resilience against disinformation campaigns targeting the system's ability to utilize information within its decision making. Disinformation is a growing challenge for many organizations and in recent years has created delay in decision making. The paper has utilized the viable systems model (VSM) to characterize organizational systems and used this approach to outline potential subsystem requirements to promote resilience of the system. The results of this paper can support the development of simulations and models considering the human elements within the system as well as support the development of quantitative measures of resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contracampo: Brazilian Journal of Communication is the property of Revista Contracampo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Esferas is the property of Esferas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the role of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in the production of synthetic moving images--specifically, how these images could be used in online disinformation campaigns and could profoundly affect historical footage archives. AI-manipulated content, especially moving images, will have an impact far beyond the current Information Warfare (IW) environment and will bleed into the unconsidered terrain of visual historical archives with unknown consequences. The paper will also consider IW scenarios in which new types of longterm disinformation campaigns may emerge and will conclude with potential verification and containment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil society in Singapore has existed in the interstices of society with frequent instances of conflict with the government. The ruling People's Action Party government has had a long history of quashing its political opponents, and this same approach has influenced how the government deals with social-political dissent, ranging from human rights groups being gazetted and their funding source curtailed, to opposition politicians and free speech advocates sued for libel and contempt of court. This paper examines how the Singapore government has made two significant moves towards online media that appears at once restrictive and accommodating towards dissent. The first is the increase in legal and regulatory burdens on the media, while the second is a perceptibly generous invitation for media freedom advocates to discuss and debate about such legal frameworks. We contend that this dualism, far from signalling inclusive governance with a firm hand, only affirms the Singapore government's authoritarian tendencies towards media freedom advocates. This paper juxtaposes the evolution of narratives of dissent between the 2013 Amendment to the Broadcasting Act to the 2019 public debate on the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA). We explore the dynamics of resistance and posit that, even with the enlarged space for free speech in Singapore, the practice in public discourse points to further curtailment of such free speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies shared contents related to COVID-19 by Algerian Facebook users and aims to categorize them according to their level of truthfulness and harm. In addition, the paper reveals how the content and linguistic features contribute to the verification of the shared information’s (dis)factuality and (in)validity. A corpus of Facebook infodemic in Algeria (CoFIA) is compiled for the analysis. First, a factual analysis is conducted for the purpose of infodemic categorization into mis-, dis-, and mal-information. Second, a qualitative content analysis is used to highlight the harm of the information type by discussing major linguistic features found in those categories of information. Online fact-checking tools supported the confirmation of information disorders. Misinformation found in CoFIA was 46.77 %, disinformation was 36.22 %, and mal-information was 22 %. Besides, the content and linguistic aspects of the posts contributed to a considerable extent to the verification of the information type and the actors’ intentions to mislead and/or harm. Algerian Facebook users and even official pages did not recognize the risks of misinformation with the COVID-19 outbreak. Raising public awareness about the impacts of information on social media was recommended to precede such a health emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]