The goal of DisinfoWatch is to build long-term resilience against mis/disinformation in society by exposing instances of such activities and educating the public about how to detect and react when they spot mis/disinformation.

During the COVID pandemic, it has become more important than ever for western democratic societies to expose and raise awareness of mis/disinformation as malign foreign and domestic actors seek to confuse and polarize our societies using a mix of hoaxes, conspiracy theories, blatant fabrications and propaganda.

DisinfoWatch aims to monitor, analyze and expose the COVID “infodemic” and other forms of mis/disinformation, and encourage greater social resilience against it through education and awareness.

Through a global network of partners and our own team, DisinfoWatch monitors for mis/disinformation narratives online and on social media.

This includes but is not limited to mis/disinformation appearing on:

• foreign state-sponsored platforms;
• platforms aligned with malign foreign regimes;
• conspiracy theory platforms that promote narratives that align with malign foreign regimes;
• astroturf organizations and proxy groups operating in Canada aligned with malign foreign regimes;
• accounts on social media platforms that share narratives aligned with malign foreign regimes, conspiracy theory platforms and groups that both actively and passively pollute the information environment with mis/disinformation, regardless of intent.
• Third-language media in Canada and elsewhere that promote narratives that align with malign foreign regimes.
• Instances of mis/disinformation posted and debunked by recognized fact checking organizations.

Data and instances of mis/disinformation deploying payloads that include COVID-19 narratives are actively collected on an ongoing basis.

By exposing and raising awareness of mis/disinformation, we hope to educate the public to identify and expose disinformation and build long-term, broad resilience against it in society.

Cases of mis/disinformation that we detect are added to our database alongside data that measures its spread. Information about location, platforms and links that debunk and expose the nature of the mis/disinformation are included where possible.

A regular digest of mis/disinformation cases and trends will be published to the platform every week.

Instances of mis/disinformation are analyzed and exposed, creating a comprehensive public database of COVID related disinformation affecting Canadians as well as our allies.

Data about the impact of mis/disinformation content will be measured using tools that calculate the number of social media shares on social media.

Our academic partners will provide additional analysis to expose the virality and scope of global exposure to disinformation narratives, which will comprise a core part of our weekly disinformation digest.

Covid mis/disinformation content types that we monitor and analyze content for:

• Information intended to confuse and sow doubt that manipulates facts or is based on fabrications (Disinformation)
• fake/hoax cures (Hoax)
• Conspiracy theories including those about the origin and spread of the novel coronavirus (Conspiracy)
• Government narratives that leverage the pandemic to support unrelated domestic and foreign political objectives (mask diplomacy etc) (Misdirection or Soft Power Propaganda Narratives)
• Incorrect or misleading information or amplification of disinformation that isn’t published with the exclusive intent to deceive. (Misinformation)

The project was founded by Marcus Kolga, who has analyzed and exposed foreign disinformation and influence campaigns since 2007.

Marcus writes and comments regularly in Canadian and international media on foreign disinformation and Central and Eastern European issues and his documentary films have been screened or broadcast across North America and Europe.

He has spoken and testified in the US Capitol and the UK, Australian, Canadian and Estonian Parliaments about Magnitsky Sanctions, Russian disinformation and Interpol reform.

He is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad.