While influence operations are most widely discussed in the context of politics and electoral interference, they are no longer confined to state-on-state activity. They are increasingly being deployed against a variety of targets, from private individuals to multinational corporations, with a material impact. These often seemingly random assaults can trigger stakeholder panic and customer confusion, erode trust and confidence in a brand, and cause deep reputational embarrassment for the targeted company. In the case of public companies, this has often resulted in a drop in share price or direct loss of revenue.
In May 2019, for example, rumours surrounding Metro Bank snowballed across WhatsApp, claiming the bank was facing severe financial difficulties and urging customers to withdraw funds from their accounts as quickly as possible. In scenes reminiscent of the Mary Poppins bank run, queues of panicked customers started forming within hours at several of the bank’s branches. The rumour was untrue, with no risks to customers’ money. Yet shares tumbled by nine per cent in the following days.
In the consumer goods sector, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have both weathered attacks on their brands. Coca-Cola’s Dasani water brand was the subject of a disinformation campaign carried out through a hoax website, claiming the product was contaminated with parasites. And Pepsi was boycotted by consumers over quotes attributed to its CEO that he never actually made. Pepsi’s stock price took a significant hit the day the fake quotes started circulating, and continued to decline as they were amplified on social media.
Conspiracy theories spread across multiple platforms have also had a terrifying impact on the employees of targeted companies. In 2020, fuelled by a false story linking Covid-19 to 5G wireless networks, an employee of BT in the UK was stabbed and hospitalised. The telecommunications company was widely known to be installing a 5G network across the UK.
Automating authority
Disinformation campaigns are not a new phenomenon, with examples dating back to the invention of the printing press. Fake news, while popularised as a term in the months leading up to the 2016 US presidential election, was used as a propaganda tool throughout the 20th century. In recent years, however, social media has precipitated an outbreak of false narratives on a global scale, eroding trust in sources previously considered reliable. Many people are flocking to social and alternative media channels as their primary source of information.
As automation is cheap and anonymity easy to achieve on these platforms, they have become prone to manipulation. Automation can enable the creation of thousands of false identities promoting a story until it starts ‘trending’, endowing it with ostensible authority. False narratives may also be supported by the use of convincing synthetic media (such as doctored photos and deepfakes), masquerading as evidence.
With artificially-generated credibility, sophisticated attacks on a company’s reputation can reach millions of people. The platforms are difficult to regulate and moderate, making the already complex task of mitigating online disinformation campaigns even more difficult.
Simply spotting a rumour in its early stages is not enough to mitigate against its potential effects. Identifying its source is necessary to prevent worsening attacks and assuage stakeholders’ fears. Such attacks can spread rapidly and be highly corrosive – and even when proven wrong, they can leave lingering mistrust and reputational damage.
Countering sophisticated attacks – Digitalis’s methodology
Digitalis’s technology enables us to gather data, run advanced automated analytics, identify coordinated inauthentic behaviour and artificial amplification, and perform bespoke queries to interrogate the data. The Disinformation Investigations Unit itself is staffed by Digitalis personnel with backgrounds in military intelligence, digital and geopolitical risk and technology, with deep knowledge of algorithms, search engines and social media.
Recently, the Unit’s capabilities have assisted in fingerprinting state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, revealed damaging conspiracy theories, and identified the inauthentic manipulation of media and social media platforms across multiple campaigns. The team has also unveiled the real-world identities behind some of the most harmful content online and behind many hundreds of successful takedown requests.
Digitalis’s Disinformation Investigations Unit can work directly with PR agencies and in-house communications teams who discover fake news via their traditional monitoring channels but have no idea why, or by whom, it was created. Rather than simply denying a rumour, PRs will have the ability to understand its source and the agenda of those behind it, enabling them to make quick and informed decisions on the best way to deal with it. For enquiries or to receive a quote for work please contact James Hann, Head of Digital Risk, at james.hann@digitalis.com or Carys Whomsley, Associate Director, at carys.whomsley@digitalis.com
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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email webrequests@digitalis.com
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to webrequests@digitalis.com