How to detect cross-platform misinformation campaigns (part two)

Author: Zhouhan Chen
Date: July, 2022
Information Tracer Home Page

In the previous blog, we talked about how Information Tracer can automatically discover cross-platform misinformation campaigns. We also shared a few campaigns we identified.

In this blog, we will keep sharing more findings. We will highlight questionable news organizations, suspicious accounts and their behaviors on each platform.

Our findings

[1] The Blaze

Media Bias Fact Check rate The Blaze strongly Right Biased and Questionable based on the promotion of conspiracy theories and numerous failed fact checks. According to Information Tracer, a large number of Facebook and Reddit accounts repeatedly share URLs from the website. The table below lists some account names. Our network visualization shows those accounts share highly similar URLs.

Some accounts have misleading names. For example, white house brief is not an official account from White House, but operated by BlazeTV White House correspondent Jon Miller. The channel describes itself as a place to find out what the mainstream media ISN’T telling you about the Trump administration.

For more detail please visit https://informationtracer.com/?url=theblaze.com/shows/the-glenn-beck-program/rachel-levine-sam-brinton

[2] Life News

Life News is another suspicious media outlet. It is rated Right Biased and Questionable based on the use of poor sources, promotion of pseudoscience, and numerous failed fact-checks. We identify a typical multiple-platform promotion campaign – four accounts with variations of lifenews co-share its URLs on Twitter, Gab, Facebook and Reddit around the same time to reach maximum number of audiences.

For more detail please visit https://informationtracer.com/?url=lifenews.com/2022/07/20/michigan-gov-gretchen-whitmer-vetoes-21-4-million-for-pregnancy-centers-and-adoption

[3] Red State

What is Red State? According to Media Bias Fact Check:

Overall, we rate RedState borderline Questionable and strongly Right Biased, based on story selection that always favors the right and use of emotionally loaded (sensationalized) headlines. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to poor sourcing of information and several failed fact checks.

Based on our findings, Red State shares its content via multiple accounts to maximize its influence. Several Gab accounts also help to spread its URLs.

For more detail please visit https://informationtracer.com/?url=redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/07/20/nyc-mayor-eric-adams-is-now-whining-about-influx-of-illegal-aliens-to-his-city-n598530

[4] A Gab Cluster sharing multi-platform content

In previous examples, each group of accounts share URLs from a single source. In this example, a group of Gab accounts share URLs from multiple source. In another word, Information Tracer can only know discover cross-platform accounts, but also discover questionable cross-platform content.

This is a powerful capability because one account may share contents from multiple sources to evade detection. In this example, our algorithm discovers a small but tight group – three Gab accounts realbnelms, ildonaldotrumpo and projectveritas sharing URLs that redirect users to multiple websites including Youtube, Telegram and Twitter. The table below shows where each URL shared by those three Gab accounts originates.

For more detail please visit
https://informationtracer.com/?url=youtube.com/watch?v=hqsKgx8uW5g

In conclusion

As you can see, spreaders are becoming more sophisticated. We are digging deep into our data and will update our findings in future post. If you have any idea or feedback, please contact zhouhan.chen@nyu.edu.