Behind The Paper

What I Investigated:

This paper started with a question I could not leave alone: why does misinformation spread faster than the truth, and what can actually be done about it?

Using the Russia-Ukraine war as its case study, the paper traces how misinformation operates across platforms, from encrypted apps like Telegram to the algorithm-driven feeds of TikTok and Instagram. It maps the specific types of misinformation used in the conflict (military and political) and the methods through which it spreads: recontextualised images, fake eyewitness accounts, and coordinated troll networks.

From there, the paper weighs the two main regulatory responses: platform self-regulation and state intervention. Both have worked to some degree. Both fall short in different ways. Self-regulation is inconsistent and shaped by profit. State regulation risks becoming a censorship tool, particularly when governments themselves are sources of misinformation. Russia's framing of its invasion as a "special military operation" is the clearest example of that risk.

The conclusion does not offer a simple fix, because there isn’t one. What it argues instead is that the misinformation crisis requires a hybrid approach: platforms as the first line of defence, state regulation reserved for high-stakes situations, and international cooperation to create standards that individual nations cannot enforce alone. Reactive regulation will always lag behind misinformation, and the only durable solution is a proactive digital environment where accuracy is structurally incentivised, not just occasionally enforced.

What This Has to Do With Everything Else:

This is where the research connects back to everything else on this site. Misinformation is, at its core, a communication problem. False narratives spread because people lack the tools, context, or confidence to interrogate what they are told. Building that capacity, in schools, in communities, and across borders, is not a separate project from fighting misinformation. It is the same project. That is what Project Flare, Project Reperio, and the work at Meet-The-People Sessions are all trying to do, from the ground up.