How will disinformation techniques evolve to profit from the crisis? How do different societies or groups imbibe, use or combat rumour and misinformation? How will fear of pandemic resurgence affect the willingness of publics to accept greater surveillance
Background
Our remit is global and our interests correspondingly wide. The below are indicative rather than fully comprehensive questions of relevance for our work and are arranged into ten overlapping categories.
The dynamic nature of world events and diplomatic work around them mean that we often need research based insights to help anticipate, shape, manage and benefit from unfolding developments and possible futures. The synthesised expertise of researchers can help us make judgements in a policy environment where experimental trials and replicable results are often impossible or inappropriate.
Because time can be of the essence we value emerging results and insights shared via updates, short events, websites and similar, in advance of peer reviewed articles.
Next steps
Get in touch with fcocorrespondence@fco.gov.uk
Source
This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:
FCO Areas of research interest coronavirus COVID 19 update May 2020 GOVUK
Related UKRI funded projects
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Infodemic: Combatting COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories
Responding to the WHO's warning that misinformation surrounding COVID-19 constitute an 'infodemic', this project will focus on conspiracy theories as a particularly harmful kind of misinformation. Our research will lead ...
Funded by: COVID
Why might this be relevant?
The project focuses on combatting the spread of conspiracy theories in the pandemic and analyzes how these narratives circulate in the online environment during the crisis.
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COVID-19: Being alone together: developing fake news immunity
This project is framed in the area of "crisis informatics", the study of how (mis)information about COVID-19 is generated and flows over media platforms. The main goal is that of reverse-engineering the manipul...
Funded by: COVID
Why might this be relevant?
The project aims to develop fake news immunity and provides guidelines on how to detect semi-fake COVID-19 news.
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Influence, Manipulation and Information Threats as Adversarial Techniques: Events, Evolution and Effects - IMITATE3
The 'Influence, Manipulation, and Information Threats as Adversarial Techniques: Events, Evolution and Effects' (IMITATE3) programme is designed to deliver robust, innovative insights and evidence about how foreign state...
Funded by: ESRC
Why might this be relevant?
The project specifically focuses on how state-linked information operations seek to shape public perceptions and political decision-making, addressing disinformation techniques and their effects.