I’ve been reading more frequently about the information war, and some of the concepts I’ve come across feel very timely at the minute, when it’s clear we are fighting oppression on the streets as well as online.

For instance, it feels essential to remember that whilst we may rally and organise online, oppressive governments and groups will also do so, and will attempt to undermine the growth of this as much as possible.

We are no strangers to this, having seen how far governments, and organisations attached to them, went in recent years to sway elections (US) and referendums (UK)

Now, we must be aware of how the BLM movement could be being undermined online. I have currently seen a few examples of this, including the police vandalising stores and their own cars to share misinformation.

Which shows an awareness of even individual police precincts how misinformation can be easily spread online, and manipulated for their own aims. It is important to be vigilant. firstly by being aware of these tactics and questioning what we are sharing.

It is also possible they could be infiltrating online spaces now in order to later undermine them.

It’s time to all collectively get more savvy at recognising this abuse of our online spaces, which are meant to be free and are ultimately being taken from us. I’m going to share some organisations/ articles/ books that discuss this below:

This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality - Peter Pomerantsev

Information Politics, Protests and Human Rights in the Digital Age - Mahmoood Monshipouri

Recode podcasts by Vox often cover cases of disinformation online, hopefully they might investigate how social media tactics are being mobilised to undermine protest, soon.

http://RAND.org/research/projects/truth-decay/fighting-disinformation.html is a great collection of resources you can use to detect bots/spam and track disinformation

In order to seek freedom from oppression, we must also seek freedom in our online spaces, especially as they are increasingly responsible for establishing consensus of opinion and thus create real world legislation and action.

If anyone has other organisations, books, journalists who they can add to this thread that discuss disinformation online and those in particular reference to protests please add. I’m new to this myself but haven’t seen any articles addressing this in relation to BLM yet.