More than 1,000 new members joined the MisinfoCon community in 2022

The MisinfoCon community held several events this year and is a contributor to the $100,000 WikiCredibility Grants programme

Left to right: Daniela Pinheiro (UOL), Wendi C. Thomas (MLK.com), Candice Fortman (Outlier Media), Alan Rusbridger (Prospect).

It has been a packed year for the MisinfoCon community, speakers, contributing organizations and new audiences. The MisinfoCon community held five events in 2022 — four in person and one online.

MisinfoCon @ Mozfest, March 2022

MisinfoCon at MozFest was the first MisinfoCon since the 2020 event in Washington, DC, at the Natioal Academies of Sciences (watch videos here on MisinfoCon.com).

It was the ninth MisinfoCon in a series of community-led events that began at MIT in 2017. The organization brings together professionals, ecosystem multi-stakeholders and other organizations to present their work combatting the challenges of mis- and disinformation. Its lens is intersectional: it covers other topics such as restoring trust online, trust in the media as a public value, novel solutions to combat the spread of disinformation, identifying actors, researching, and pointing the finger at disinformation campaigns targeting vulnerable groups, protecting democratic speech and election integrity.

Featured Sessions

• Around the world: Models and Interventions that Work for Promoting Information Integrity and Combatting Disinformation — Daniel Arnaudo (National Democratic Institute); Maria (Malu) Luiza, Chishaba Masengu (Check Facts Zambia); Justin Arenstein (CodeForAfrica)
• Countering Misinformation through the Power of Influence — Hannah Ajakaiye (ICFJ Knight Fellow), Ann Ngengere (Fathm), Alphonce Shiundu (AfricaCheck.Org)
• Navigating the Online Threat Landscape for Election Defenders in 2022 — Dr. John W. Kelly (Graphika)
• Intersectionality and Gendered Disinformation Targeting Women in Politics — Devan Hankerson (Center for Democracy and Technology), Gabriela De Oliveira (Head of Policy, Research and Campaigns, Glitch UK), Irene Mwendwa (Program Manager, Advocacy & Feminist Movement Building Programs, Pollicy, Uganda)
• Memes, Moods & Manipulation: New opportunities for disinformation research on Tiktok — Marcus Bösch (HAW-Hamburg), Ciarán O’Connor (Institute for Strategic Dialogue), Abbie Richards (independent TikTok researcher)
• How Veteran Wikipedia Editors Moderate Content, Enforce Verification Rules On The world’s Largest Online Encyclopedia — Netha Hussain, Ksenia Coffman, Ajna Harrar (independent Wikipedia editors)
• How Marketers Can End The Disinformation Crisis, A Review of Ad-fueled Information Disorder — Claire Atkin and Nandini Jammi (CheckMyAds), Craig Silverman (ProPublica), Nevin Thompson (Credibility Coalition)
• Unbiased news: Restoring trust in hyper-polarized media landscape, and lessons learned from a collaborative “rapid response” project addressing election mis/disinformation — Arjun Moorthy (TheFactual.Com), Kate Starbird (UW-CIP, Internews), Meghann Rhynard-Geil (Internews)
• Wikipedia and The Science of Knowledge Integrity — Miriam Redi, Diego Sáez-Trumper (Wikimedia Foundation Research Team)
• The Disinformation Ecosystem in 2022: New, Authentic, and Recurring Actors — Rachel Levy (ActiveFence)

Every MisinfoCon event is both a medium and a platform for good conversations and presenting novel research. You can find the slides from these sessions at Mozfest.MisinfoCon.com.

MisinfoCon @ IJF, April 2022

Samantha Sunne (Managing Editor of MisinfoCon), Daniela Pinheiro (UOL), Wendi C. Thomas (MLK.com), Candice Fortman (Outlier Media), Alan Rusbridger (Prospect). Photo credit: Ahmed Medien, MisinfoCon @ IJF organizer

MisinfoCon @ IJF, or MisinfoCon Perugia 2022, was a novel opportunity to host a MisinfoCon with journalists for a primarily journalists audience in the charming Italian city of Perugia.

Much like MisinfoCon @ Mozfest, and keeping with the focus and the mission behind MisinfoCon in 2022, at IJF, the MisinfoCon community chose to address election interference actor networks, platform accountability and adtech scrutiny and writing news for an informed citizenry in prison.

Experts from the Harvard Shorenstein Center and the NSF Convergence Accelerator grant-winning ARTT team held workshop on identifying and dissecting media manipulation campaigns and cycles, and identifying quality resources for journalists on covering the topic of vaccines.

MisinfoCon @ IJF featured a panel on creating news teams in media-starved cities for hyper local audiences, combatting the spread and challenges of misinformation through quality news, and diverse sources.

Journalists Craig Silverman (ProPublica), Wendi C. Thomas (MLK.com), Candice Fortman (Outlier Media), Daniela Pinheiro (UOL), Lawrence Bartley (The Marshall Project Inside) and Alan Rusbridger (Prospect) were among our featured diverse speakers.

You can find the full program of MisinfoCon @ IJF at Perugia.MisinfoCon.com or watch all the sessions here on YouTube.

MisinfoCon Brasil, June 2022

MisinfoCon Brasil, was the first MisinfoCon event in Portuguese, and took place in June 2022 in Brazil. It covered misinformation challenges and topics that are specific to the 2022 Brazilian general elections.

This event was held in partnership with the Brazilian fact-checking outfit Agência Lupa, and helped by a grant from the Mozilla Foundation. This MisinfoCon featured lightning talks, academic presentations and panels. These touched on the topics of: collaboration between legal institutions and civil society, election integrity and monitoring the harm and spread of election misinformation campaigns and content, and misinformation targeted at women journalists covering elections and politics in Brazil.

MisinfoCon Brasil also held additional workshops and a networking session in Rio De Janeiro as well for a local professional audience.

You can watch the full MisinfoCon event online and find the full program in Portuguese or English (interpretation) on the Agência Lupa YouTube channel.

Misinformation Village at DEFCON 30, August 2022

Photo credit: Ahmed Medien, Co-Lead of the Misinformation Village

The Misinformation Village was a first foray into the largest hackers conference in North America, with 30,000 people in attendance. Speakers and members of the MisinfoCon community collaborated across several industries including misinformation research, cybersecurity and cognitive and information security. The organizers put together a two-day event full of lightning talks, longer talks and fireside chats.

You can read the full program of the Misinformation Village at DefCon.MisinfoCon.com and download the slides from the presentations. You can also see the 25 presentations talks from the Misinformation Village here.

WikiCred, 2022–2023

Finally, the MisinfoCon community continues to contribute to the philanthropically-sponsored and Wikimedia Foundation-funded WikiCredibility Grants Program, supporting projects that aim to add more content and resources onreproductive health on Wikipedia, as well as new misinformation events in parts of the world outside Europe and the US.

You can find more about the WikiCredibiliy grants program on WikiCred.org, on its wiki meta page, or sign up to join future WikiCred webinars.

MisinfoCon Blog

You can find more MisinfoCon research, events and updates on the MisinfoCon website. In 2022, our Medium shared research on misinformation in social segregation, vaccine sources, coordinated social network groups, and other topics. You can also subscribe to our biweekly newsletter.