07/02/2024

Debunking ‘NATO Troops in Coffins’

NewsGuard and Bloom Social Analytics Unveil New Partnership to produce Groundbreaking Reports on Disinformation Campaigns

(July 2, 2024 — New York) NewsGuard, which deploys experienced journalists and advanced technology to detect, analyze, and capture data about misinformation spreading online, and Bloom Social Analytics, a French AI start-up specializing in social media analytics and influence operation detection, announce the launch of a strategic partnership to produce ground breaking reports on the origins, spread and evolution of disinformation campaigns targeting the Western democracies. 

These joint reports are produced on demand for public sector actors, analyzing in detail specific disinformation campaigns and narratives. A first report merging the expertise of both companies was presented this month at no cost to representatives of the European Union, NATO and the French army. The production of similar reports is now available on request.

Titled “Russia resurrects its NATO-Ukraine false narrative: NATO troops in coffins,” Bloom and NewsGuard’s first joint report, published today, traces the origins and dissemination pathways of the false narrative that NATO troops are being secretly repatriated from Ukraine in coffins. 

Exploiting ‘high-traction, low-credibility’ spreaders

The report documents how Kremlin-linked news sites enabled the narrative to spread from Russian media to other languages, with high-traction, low-credibility news sites and social media accounts playing a crucial role in disseminating the narrative. It also proves the dangerousness of a low-virality campaign whose impact is measured less in the virality of individual posts, and more as a sustained effort over time.

By mapping the spread and characteristics of the campaign, including signs of coordination on X and Facebook, the report demonstrates the tactics used to manipulate public opinion and the potential consequences for international relations and public trust. It provides Western analysts with comprehensive recommendations on how to mitigate the campaign’s potential impact. 

“This partnership with Bloom represents an important step forward in our mission to equip Western democracies with tools to better understand and combat mis- and disinformation,” said Chine Labbé, Vice-President of Partnerships for Europe and Canada at NewsGuard. “By merging  Bloom’s cutting-edge AI social media analysis with our rigorous journalistic identification of disinformation sources and narratives, we provide decision-makers with unprecedented tools, and deliver insights at unprecedented speed.”

Jérémy Aron, Vice-President for the Public Sector at Bloom, added, “Our collaboration with NewsGuard is essential in today’s information landscape. Our joint efforts allow us to provide a holistic view of the disinformation mechanisms at play and empower public sector leaders with the tools they need for strategic communication and policy-making.”

The Bloom-NewsGuard partnership promises to deliver detailed, actionable reports that combine NewsGuard’s meticulously curated source reliability ratings and human analysis of false narratives with Bloom’s expansive analysis of social network data in over 40 languages. This initiative will provide public sector customers and policymakers with an unmatched level of analytical depth, offering insights necessary for combating the sophisticated and dynamic challenges of digital disinformation.

To access the full joint report on the disinformation narrative regarding NATO troops, please click here.

To learn more about the joint reports, or order one, contact [email protected] or [email protected].

 

About Bloom

Bloom Social Analytics is a deep-tech company specialized in using data from social networks to meet various needs in the fields of Stratcom, Intelligence, Military, and Law Enforcement. Our offer is based on a hybrid blend of cutting-edge technology and human expertise, built around three pillars: data, SaaS, and consulting. With our own Artificial Intelligence technology, a solid business experience, and the trust of our customers in the private and public sectors, we have become the company of choice for helping firms and organizations to manage information manipulation. FIMI, influence operations, disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, and cognitive warfare are the daily topics covered by our teams in over 40 different languages and in all geographical areas. The large number of informational events detected, characterized, and analyzed by Bloom over the years have enabled us to acquire unique expertise in this field. Our proprietary technology collects large volumes of social data from conversational networks, then carries out in-depth dynamic analysis. Consolidated by predictive models and the expertise of Bloom’s staff, these analyses provide the trends, operational and strategic elements needed to understand the digital environment and make the right decisions at the right time.

 

About NewsGuard

Founded by media entrepreneur and award-winning journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard provides transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Since launching in 2018, its global staff of trained journalists and information specialists has collected, updated, and deployed more than 6.9 million data points on more than 35,000 news and information sources, and cataloged and tracked all of the top false narratives spreading online. NewsGuard’s analysts, powered by multiple AI tools, operate the trust industry’s largest and most accountable dataset on news. These data are deployed to fine-tune and provide guardrails for generative AI models, enable brands to advertise on quality news sites and avoid propaganda or hoax sites, provide media literacy guidance for individuals, and support democratic governments in countering hostile disinformation operations targeting their citizens. Among other indicators of the scale of its operations is that NewsGuard’s apolitical and transparent criteria have been applied by its analysts to rate news sources accounting for 95% of online engagement with news across nine countries.