The EU DisinfoLab is an independent non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on “researching and tackling sophisticated disinformation campaigns targeting the European Union, its member states, core institutions, and core values.” (1) The lab has created the Ukraine Conflict Resource Hub with essential information and links to reliable research, analysis, and fact-checks to help [organizations] navigate during this crisis. You can also find tips and ways to combat mis— and disinformation as well as responses brought to counter disinformation.
Sections of the Resource Hub (and available resources within each section) include:
Narratives and Hoaxes
Detector Media: The organization “collects all narratives, messages, and tactics, which Russia is using from February 17th, 2022 to spread disinformation about the Russian invasion.”
EDMO: The European Digital Media Observatory is updating a list of fact-checking articles that members of its fact-checking network publish during the conflict. EDMO has published an article analysing the false narratives spreading about the war in Ukraine. And it has set up a taskforce on disinformation about the war in Ukraine.
Facta.news: Italian fact-checker and IFCN signatory, Facta, compile a list of disinformation narratives around Ukraine (in Italian only).
Fake fact-checks: ProPublica reports on Russian-language videos spreading on social media claiming to debunk Ukrainian disinfo. They’re actually part of a campaign that spreads disinformation by disguising it as fact-checking (Twitter thread).
ISD: The Institute for Strategic Dialogue covers the Russia-Ukraine conflict in all its areas of expertise. On this page, you will find ISD’s latest analysis, reports, and resources ISD has previously produced on disinformation, information operations, and state-linked online assets.
NewsGuard Disinformation Tracking Center: NewsGuard has identified 114 Russian disinformation sites and is tracking the top false narratives that they are publishing about the invasion of Ukraine.
Wikipedia: The online encyclopedia created a page for disinformation in the 2021-2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis.
Responses to Disinformation
CJR: Columbia Journalism Review keeps a timeline of all the activities affecting newsrooms and platforms during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Online platforms: Social media platforms are regularly updating their policies to reduce the spread of misinformation. The resource hub provides an update on these policy changes.
Sanctions against Russia: Correctiv provides a live monitoring of all sanctions and embargoes against Russia.
Sanctions against Russia Today & Sputnik: The Council of the EU suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik’ and Russia Today in the EU. More here.
Media Manipulation Casebook: The Shorenstein Center’s Media Manipulation Casebook has been updated with useful records of social media takedowns and content moderation during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Open-Source Material
Bellingcat: The fact-checking and open-source intelligence group has put together a public spreadsheet collecting entries when incidents have been verified, debunked or if claims contained within videos or images are inconsistent with other open-source evidence or contextual data.
Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map: The Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map is a crowdsourced effort by Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), Bellingcat, Mnemonic, and the Conflict Intelligence Team, and the wider open source community to maps and documents, and verifies significant incidents during the conflict in Ukraine. You can follow this CIR Twitter thread for more information about the geolocation of Russian firing positions causing destruction in Ukraine.
Tips and Threats
Access Now. The organization provides updates on the measures taken to protect people involved in the conflict from cyber threats.
BBC News: BBC Specialist disinformation reporter Marianna Spring shares tips on how to spot fake news and false posts about the conflict in Ukraine.
Cyberpeace Institute: The organization has built a timeline of how cyberattacks and operations have been targeting critical infrastructure and civilian objects.
Defend Democracy: The organization provides guidance on how to share information responsibly. You can also to Defend Democracy’s podcast on the do’s and dont’s of dealing with disinformation in this time of war.
GIJN: The Global Investigative Journalism Network has put together a regularly updated toolkit to help reporters around the world investigate about Russia.
Mental Health: In this Reuters article, Headlines Network founder Hannah Storm offers tips to reporters and editors on how to protect themselves while monitoring the conflict.
Ukraine Conflict Disinformation: Worldwide Narratives and Trends
EU Disinfo Lab staffers have provided an initial analysis and taxonomy of the disinformation narratives and trends emerging from the conflict in Ukraine:
“Among the narratives observed, EU DisinfoLab extracted the following overarching trends online:
- Military escalation (sub-narratives include erroneous details about military actions and reactions from the international community);
- The construction of the enemy (the instrumental use of Nazi imagery and ambivalent descriptions of Zelensky’s conduct populate this narrative);
- Conspiracy theories (from war denialism to fears of a nuclear attack and connections to the pandemic);
- The human cost of the war (the narrative tackles emotional elements related to the human experience of the war and polarising issues connected to incoming refugees). (2)
What Next?
Competitive Advantage – Strengthen Your Organization’s Cognitive Infrastructure: Leverage these open source tools to provide your organization with the best in class information to inform business strategy, operations, and risk awareness levels in Europe right now. As Matt Devost noted in the OODA Almanac 2022 – Exponential Disruption; “In 2019 we began working in the national security sector to raise awareness of a concept called Cognitive Infrastructure. US movement in the protection of this infrastructure has been slower than we would like, perhaps due in part to the uniquely American distrust of anything championed by authority or pushed by the government. Whether it is recognized by DHS as a critical infrastructure or not, it is one of critical importance to the private sector, in our view firms that understand the strengths and weaknesses of their own Cognitive Infrastructure will have an advantage over those that do not.”
Cyber Attacks are Still a Threat: The better your baseline cognitive infrastructure, the better informed your risk assessment and mitigation efforts will be if the cyber conflict escalates in Ukraine – or triggers a cyber attack in the U.S.
Ongoing Geopolitical Risks: There are many scenarios that we could see escalating tensions in Ukraine (see OODA CTO Bob Gourley’s recent For Corporate Strategic Planners: Five Scenarios For War’s End). If history is a guide it tells us the unfolding of miscalculations could lead to situations no one wants. Open-source intelligence tools are also an approach to tracking geopolitical risk in-house within your organization. We will continue to track and assess at our Geopolitical Risk Sensemaking page.
Simultaneous Crisis Mode: In 2022 our national decision-making apparatus will be significantly stressed as the U.S. tries to manage multiple simultaneous crises. A new Covid variant, January 6th investigation, China and Russia regional power projection, supply chain, cyber, and economic issues will create an opportunity for adversaries to push the envelope in hopes that capacity is diminished and distracted. Organizations will have to build decision, crisis, and operational resiliency informed by strategic forecasting.
OODA is here to help. OODA members can contact us by replying to any of our emails or using this form.
For More on Cognitive Infrastructure Concepts
America’s Most Critical Infrastructure is also Our Most Neglected Infrastructure
Mitigating Risks To America’s Cognitive Infrastructure
Further Open-Source Intelligence Resources
Open-Source Intelligence Resources: The USGS 2022 List of Critical Minerals: Moody’s Analytics economist Tim Uy wrote in a recent report: “The greatest risk facing global supply chains has shifted from the pandemic to the Russia-Ukraine military conflict and the geopolitical and economic uncertainties it has created.” Our recent “Warning for the U.S. Chip Industry: Russian Retaliation Could Hit Supply of Key Materials” provided a breakdown of the Russian and Ukraine-source materials critical to the semiconductor manufacturing process (Neon, Palladium, etc.). In February, The US Geological Survey released the 2022 List of Critical Minerals. Palladium and Scandium are included in the USGS list.
The UNHRC Operational Data Portal – Ukrainian Refugees: The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and making recommendations on them. The Operational Data Portal (ODP) was created in 2011 to enable UNHCR’s institutional responsibility to provide any information and data-sharing platform to facilitate the coordination of refugee emergencies.
Bellingcat and the Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map: Bellingcat (an innovative open-source investigative journalism network and business model) has been in our research arsenal for a while – ripe for a post to introduce our readers to their tools, investigations, and innovative approach to networked journalism. The war in Europe has now put Bellingcat in the spotlight, based on the growing popularity of their crowdsourced mapping and monitoring efforts.
Related Reading:
Black Swans and Gray Rhinos
Now more than ever, organizations need to apply rigorous thought to business risks and opportunities. In doing so it is useful to understand the concepts embodied in the terms Black Swan and Gray Rhino. See: Potential Future Opportunities, Risks and Mitigation Strategies in the Age of Continuous Crisis
Cybersecurity Sensemaking: Strategic intelligence to inform your decisionmaking
The OODA leadership and analysts have decades of experience in understanding and mitigating cybersecurity threats and apply this real-world practitioner knowledge in our research and reporting. This page on the site is a repository of the best of our actionable research as well as a news stream of our daily reporting on cybersecurity threats and mitigation measures. See: Cybersecurity Sensemaking
Corporate Sensemaking: Establishing an Intelligent Enterprise
OODA’s leadership and analysts have decades of direct experience helping organizations improve their ability to make sense of their current environment and assess the best courses of action for success going forward. This includes helping establish competitive intelligence and corporate intelligence capabilities. Our special series on the Intelligent Enterprise highlights research and reports that can accelerate any organization along its journey to optimized intelligence. See: Corporate Sensemaking
The OODAcast Video and Podcast Series
In 2020, we launched the OODAcast video and podcast series designed to provide you with insightful analysis and intelligence to inform your decision-making process. We do this through a series of expert interviews and topical videos highlighting global technologies such as cybersecurity, AI, and quantum computing along with discussions on global risk and opportunity issues. See: The OODAcast
