Christopher Walker, Author at MarvelousAI

17 Sep 2019

WalkAway: Operationalizing an Election-based Information Attack

Election Coverage, Influence Campaigns, Uncategorized

Much of the election misinformation conversation in mainstream journalistic sources centers on a number of important, but limited, themes: How can the "truth" of information be policed online? How widely are falsehoods spread online? How widely are they believed? What are the impacts of these belief on candidate choice, come…

10 Sep 2019

By Christopher Walker

Misinformation or Disinformation?

Influence Campaigns, Information Security, Misinformation

Disinformation is commonly defined as dissemination of explicitly false or misleading information; and misinformation as the communication of false information without intent to deceive, manipulate or otherwise obtain an outcome. Elsewhere, misinformation is used for the deliberate case, both inclusive and exclusive of the accidental case. Other researchers use malinformation…

09 Sep 2019

By Christopher Walker

The War on Pineapple

Credibility, Influence Campaigns, Information Security, Misinformation

The challenges for democracies and open societies in the misinformation age substantially outstrip those faced by authoritarian regimes. This is most prominently because of their more limited range of response options in the context of public accountability. A prominent obstacle in American domestic misinformation defenses is that they can easily…

06 Sep 2019

By Christopher Walker

The Future is Here: Preparing for 2020

Influence Campaigns, Information Security, Misinformation

While researching for an upcoming workshop on counter-measures for misinformation attacks, I came across an article published in 1995 by Col. Richard Szafranski (USAF) with the ominous subtitle Preparing for 2020. Even more ominously, it ends with this passage, predating social media: The United States should expect that its information…

20 Mar 2019

By Christopher Walker

Marvelous at the Misinfo Workshop

Credibility, Influence Campaigns, Information Security, Misinformation

Last week, social media counter-influence pioneer Clint Watts proposed a new framework for understanding the current state of online influence operations in a post at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Clint's clarity and concision continue to be a real asset to a rapidly developing, but still quite chaotic field of…

26 Feb 2019

By Christopher Walker

A Note on Tactics

Credibility, Election Coverage, Political Bias

Internet clown Jacob Wohl said the quiet part out loud today in a widely discussed USA Today story. Twitter promptly banned Wohl for violating its terms of service. But most observers conclude too little, too late. At the same time, Greenwald continues his campaign of false equivalency, this time against…

22 Feb 2019

By Christopher Walker

Defining a Front-Runner: Online Trolls versus Kamala Harris

Credibility, Election Coverage, Political Bias

tl;dr In this post we elaborate on reporting from Politico about influence campaigns using recent work at Marvelous AI: we demonstrate a persistent, escalating effort to define Kamala Harris on Twitter; we summarize two prominent stories that factor in several narrative themes about her candidacy; we present a nascent framework…

20 Feb 2019

By Christopher Walker

The Russians are Coming

Credibility, Election Coverage, Political Bias

Advanced Persistent Threat A Politico story today is reporting ‘Sustained and ongoing’ disinformation assault targets Dem presidential candidates. A wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic 2020 candidates is already underway on social media, with signs that foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity. The main targets appear…

13 Feb 2019

By Christopher Walker

Are You A Useful Idiot or a Neoliberal Shill? Take our 10 Tweet Test to Find Out!

Credibility, Election Coverage, Political Bias

Back to the 2020 Candidates We were working on some client projects last week and never got a chance to do a post. So we have some catching up to do. We'll talk about the election events of the past couple weeks in a series of posts over the next…

02 Feb 2019

By Christopher Walker

Week in Review: February 1, 2019

Credibility, Election Coverage, Political Bias

Harris-Warren-Sanders Kamala Harris (violet), Bernie Sanders (peach) and Elizabeth Warren (blue) are the candidates that Twitter continues to talk about. As the overall volume of Harris' tweets continues to rise, Bernie is passing benchmarks set by Harris just a few weeks ago. The race is on. And people are talking…