This is the first issue of “GEC Counter-Disinformation Dispatches,” which will be issued on an occasional basis.  The Congressionally-mandated mission of the Global Engagement Center (GEC) of the U.S. Department of State is to lead U.S. government efforts to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and foreign non-state propaganda and disinformation.”  “GEC Counter-Disinformation Dispatches” seeks to pull together the best information on how to counter disinformation from frontline fighters in this effort around the world.  We welcome your comments and suggestions, which can be sent to GECDisinfoDispatches@state.gov.

“Geeks” + “elves” + journalists = success in countering disinformation.

This is the formula that Debunk.eu and its partners use in Lithuania.

They are busy all the time.  Russia has launched a full-scale propaganda and disinformation assault on Lithuania aimed at “a very huge variety of targets,” says Tomas Ceponis of the Lithuanian military.  In a three-month period, bots created half of all "Russian-language news about NATO in the Baltic states and Poland," according to Rolf Fredheim, a data scientist at NATO's Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Latvia.

In fighting disinformation, Debunk.eu geeks — about 15 information technology and artificial intelligence experts — develop algorithms that, on a daily basis, scrape more than 1,500 domains known for spreading disinformation.  They search in Lithuanian, Russian, and English, and can add any language desired.

They process some 30,000 articles every day, or about 20,000 text pages.  The algorithms look for key words and more than 600 propaganda and disinformation “narratives” such as “Lithuania is a failed state,” “NATO is occupying Lithuania,” or “A young boy or girl died during military training.”  A recent Economist article on Debunk.eu’s efforts notes that disinformation topics are often inflammatory: “poverty, rape, environmental degradation, military shortcomings, war games, societal rifts, viruses and other health scares, political blunders, poor governance, … children, immigrants, sex, ethnicities, animals, national heroes and injustice.”

The algorithm finds familiar narratives and discovers new ones.  Almost all are critical of Lithuania.  In 2018, the platform analyzed 4.5 million articles.  Then, the winnowing begins. Disinformation is ignored if it is in a small blog, no one is republishing it, there is no traction on social media, and its impact is minimal.  But if it’s in a more significant publication, or is gaining traction on social media, it needs attention.

An “Infometer” (scoring mechanism) measures how important the various false claims are.  The top two percent are selected for debunking and sent by automated email to Lithuania’s elves, who begin their work.

The “elves” are volunteers who fight pro-Kremlin “trolls” on the Internet, challenging disinformation.  They began these efforts in 2014, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine.  A group of 40 elves started countering troll remarks in the “comments” sections of online newspapers.  Before Debunk.eu was established, the elves had developed their own monitoring tool to follow hostile comments on news portals.  The elves soon expanded their battlefield to Facebook, which is very popular in Lithuania.  They report the most toxic trolls to Facebook for violating its regulations. (Elf emblem above right)

Today there are about 5,000 elves.  They research false stories in areas they know well.  They label each sentence or part of a story “neutral,” “true,” or “false,” while providing supporting evidence with sources.  They score each story’s potential to harm, which helps the journalists decide which stories to focus on.  When finished, the thoroughly researched stories are emailed to eight newsrooms. They include:

• Lithuanian National Radio and Television
• Delfi, the largest online media company in the three Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia)
• Liberty TV, a crowd-funded TV station that broadcasts only on YouTube

In 2018, the elves held an “Elves’ Academy,” training some 50 people from 10 other countries in “elf methods” with lectures by top counter-disinformation experts.  Elves chapters now exist in Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.  There is also the Cyber Legionnaires movement in Georgia, and beginning groups in Armenia, Ukraine, and Poland.

Journalists at the various publications that receive researched and debunked disinformation stories from the elves, decide which ones to pursue, working by themselves, with the elves, or with other publications.  The Financial Times reports:

Vaidas Saldziunas, Delfi’s defense editor, scrolls through example stories tackled by the site.  These include false reports that a NATO vehicle knocked a boy off his bike and killed him, tales of biological weapons tests in the Baltic states and claims of a UFO being shot down over Lithuania.  “A lot of people don’t really read beyond the headlines,” he says.  One group of hackers managed to smuggle a false story of a NATO plan to invade neighboring Belarus into a news organization’s feed for a week.

In 2018, the combined efforts of Debunk.eu, the elves, and journalists resulted in more than 100 articles being published about debunked disinformation claims.  These articles were read an estimated 6.5 million times, in a country with a population of 2.8 million.

Lithuania’s anti-disinformation activists have created a totally integrated system.  Debunk.eu’s algorithms spot disinformation stories within two minutes, the organization says, isolating the ones with the greatest potential to spread fake news.  The elves do the bulk of the time-consuming research to debunk false claims.  Professional journalists create finished stories in partnering media organizations that reach some 90 percent of Lithuania’s population.  The organizations also cooperate with academic experts, the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Strategic Communication units of the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense.  There is constant sharing of information among the different organizations, drawing on each other’s knowledge and capabilities. 

The fully integrated system avoids the problems of piecemeal initiatives.  Technology companies may be able to create automated tools for spotting disinformation, but responding to it is not part of their mission.  Fact-checkers can create good content, but generally have a low outreach to citizens.  Strategic communication units in governments risk being labelled as a “Ministry of Truth” if they take the lead in responding.

Debunk.eu head Viktoras Daukšas adds:

Countermeasures often prove too slow and too fragmented, and they still rely on an outdated ‘2G’ approach, where the first G stands for Google search (manual monitoring) and the second G for Gut feeling (no data-driven evidence). [photo credit: datainnovation.org]

Daukšas says the fastest case from spotting disinformation to releasing an article debunking took two hours.

The Lithuanians are determined to resist.  “If you are deliberately spreading lies, this is not an alternative point of view. This is not freedom of expression,” says Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius.  He says he is “really proud” of Debunk.eu, the elves, and the system they have created, calling it “a great resource.”  Former Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė says, “Lithuanian initiatives – like the Demaskuok (debunk) project – help the European Union fight disinformation and hostile propaganda.”  [Emblem of Lithuania's Ministry of Foreign Affairs]

Debunk.eu is ready and eager to share its technology and insights, so others do not have to develop systems from scratch.  “We have an ambition to scale it globally and I am confident that we can grow and grow fast.” Daukšas says.  They are looking for partners in other countries with knowledge of the local environment, which is essential.

They are also working to adapt the Debunk.eu platform for election monitoring.  An initial version was tested earlier in 2019; an updated version will be released in late 2019.  Also, in July 2019, an association of civic initiatives was formed in Lithuania, which will strengthen the groups and help increase effectiveness in countering disinformation.

Debunk.eu is funded by Delfi and Google’s Digital News Initiative Fund.

For more, see:

• Debunk.eu website
• "How to Spot Disinformation within 2 Minutes in Real Time?” Medium
• “Lithuanians are using software to fight back against fake news,” The Economist, October 24, 2019
• “Meet the Elves, Lithuania’s digital citizen army confronting Russian trolls,” Independent, July 17, 2019
• “Fake news: How Lithuania’s ‘elves’ take on Russian trolls,” Financial Times, February 4, 2019

Next issue: Three Ways to Counter Disinformation

To contact us, email: GECDisinfoDispatches@state.gov

GEC Counter-Disinformation Dispatches can be found on the U.S. Department of State Content Commons webpage.   Search for "disinformation" or "Counter-Disinformation Dispatches."