Truth Decay, the diminishing role of facts in American public life, isn't a problem that any one person can fix. But there are simple steps that individuals can take to help counter it.
Extremist groups have been trolling the internet for decades, and they have learned to temper their words and disguise their intentions. A new scorecard can help users—or parents, or advertisers, or the social media companies themselves—understand when they might be interacting with extremist content.
This weekly recap focuses on the internet's role in stoking extremism and hate, how Russia has failed its military personnel, a research roadmap to help prevent police killings in the United States, and more.
How can technology help ease the transition from jails or prisons back into the community—and ensure better outcomes for individuals who have been incarcerated?
Extremist content can be found on all corners of the internet. How do the characteristics of online spaces contribute to individual radicalization? And how may the internet have helped foster conditions that contributed to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol?
This weekly recap focuses on Russia's use of mercenaries, understanding how extremist movements operate online, trends in the commercial space market, and more.
Extremist groups use internet-based tools for financing, networking and coordination, recruitment and radicalization, inter- and intra-group knowledge transfer, and mobilization to action. How do internet users engage with these efforts? And can the internet be leveraged to counter extremism?
Social media can be collected instantly, can tap into a massive pool of observers, and is remotely accessible. Researchers developed a new approach for analyzing social media data to derive insights about chemical incidents. They used chemical weapons employment in Syria as a test case.
Russia has taken increasingly aggressive actions to restrict access of information about the war in Ukraine. Ensuring that the Russian people know the truth about what their government is doing in Ukraine could bring this war to an end soon rather than later.
Terrorists continue to use the Internet to plan, train, recruit, and execute terrorist attacks. This book chapter examines how terrorist Internet use has changed over time and new social media platforms make terrorism investigations harder to do.
RAND/Google collaboration to improve machine learning models to detect and understand the rhetorical functions of conspiracy theories over social media.
This weekly recap focuses on countering anti-Asian racism, the instability of U.S. rivalries with Russia and China, the rise in extremist online activity, and more.
By the early 2010s, it was clear that the internet provided white supremacists and other extremists a tool to operationalize their hateful ideas and cause real-world harms. How can the average user understand their risk of exposure to extremist content and make informed decisions about the platforms they use?
During the pandemic, misinformation and conspiracy theories have spread more virulently than ever before. The vast scale of the problem means scalable solutions like machine learning could be needed to rein in the bots, trolls, and conspiracy theories being spread by bad-faith actors.
During the pandemic, both Russia and China used authoritarian power over the media to manipulate the news. What can be done to better detect such propaganda campaigns—and guard against them in the future?
This document is RAND Europe's submission to the UK Parliament's call for evidence on how the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office could support the UK's response to the opportunities and challenges presented by new and emerging technologies.
This weekly recap focuses on the collapse in Afghanistan, what parents think about sending kids back to school, insights from game theory on North Korean denuclearization, and more.
The rise of technology-enabled services has made it easier than ever to start a business. But entrepreneurs who wish to succeed online face new costs and challenges.
Information aggression is increasing in frequency and intensity. Russia uses messaging and intimidation in its efforts to influence multiple actors and countries. As frequent targets, how can the United States and its European allies defend themselves?
This report provides an overview of human rights in the digital age (HURDA), the trends and challenges associated with them and the capacity-building approaches that have been adopted to foster and protect them.
