Recent Computational Propaganda Trends

Hannah Bailey

PhD Researcher in the Computational Propaganda ProjectOxford Internet Institute

University of Oxford

Overview 2

Different Forms of Computational Propaganda

Authoritarian State-Backed News Outlets

Advertising and Social Media Algorithms

Junk News on Emerging Platforms

Different Forms of Computational Propaganda 3

Computational PropagandaAlgorithms, automation, and direct human efforts whichpurposefully distribute misleading information over social medianetworks (Woolley & Howard 2017).

Junk NewsVarious forms of propaganda and ideologically extreme,hyper-partisan, or conspiratorial political news andinformation (Bolsover & Howard 2017).

Authoritarian State-Backed NewsProduced by organisations either directly funded by the stateor editorially managed by authoritarian governments.

Authoritarian State-Backed News Outlets 4

1. Criticising Western democracies (Elswah & Howard 2020)

2. Promoting the authoritarian country’s own leadership(Bright et al. 2020)

Authoritarian State-Backed News Outlets 5

Authoritarian State-Backed News Outlets 6

Advertising and Social Media Algorithms 7

Junk news outlets make extensive use of advertising tomonetize their operations (Taylor et al. 2020)

Advertising and Social Media Algorithms 8

Social media platforms do not take into account the spread ofjunk news through cross-platform sharing (Marchal & Au2020b)

Junk News on Emerging Platforms 9

In Sum 10

1. Higher level of engagement

2. Access to advertising

3. Migrating to emerging platforms

Bibliography 11

Bolsover, G., Howard, P. (2017). Computational propaganda and political bigdata: Moving toward a more critical research agenda. Bright, J., Au, H., Bailey,H., Elswah, M., Schliebs, M., Marchal, N., ... Howard, P. N. (2020). CoronavirusCoverage by State-Backed English-Language News Sources.Elswah, M., Howard, P. N. (2020). “Anything that Causes Chaos”: TheOrganizational Behavior of Russia Today (RT). Journal of Communication, 70(5),623-645.Knuutila, A., Herasimenka, A., Bright, J., Nielsen, R., Howard, P. N. (2020)JUNK NEWS DISTRIBUTION ON TELEGRAM: The Visibility ofEnglish-language News Sources on Public Telegram Channels.Marchal, N., Au, H. (2020a). ¡? covid19?¿“Coronavirus EXPLAINED”:YouTube, COVID-19, and the Socio-Technical Mediation of Expertise. SocialMedia+ Society, 6(3), 2056305120948158.Marchal, N., Au, H., Howard, P. N. (2020b). Coronavirus news and informationon YouTube. Health, 1(1), 0-3.Taylor, E., Neudert, L. M., Hoffmann, S., Howard, P. N. (2020) Follow theMoney: How the Online Advertising Ecosystem Funds COVID-19 Junk News andDisinformation. Woolley, S. C., Howard, P. (2017). Computational propagandaworldwide: Executive summary.