The Comprop Navigator

Origins 

Since the Project on Computational Propaganda was founded in 2012, we’ve observed increased scrutiny being placed on governments and tech platforms to combat the problem of disinformation. With mounting pressure, these institutions have started to mobilize substantial resources to investigate and manage this issue. The development of useful tools and resources for civil society groups, however, has been slower.  

Given the critical role of civil society in democratic life, and the multitude of issues that disinformation poses, our team hosted a series of workshops with civil society practitioners in different cities with the twin goals of 1) bringing our research into closer touch with non-governmental organizations that are directly impacted by disinformation, and 2) learning more from and co-creating knowledge with civil society experts about the ongoing impact of online disinformation on their work. The initial workshop series was designed primarily for organizations who work on issues that are likely to be targets of disinformation, including but not limited to human rights, racism, gender and LGBTQI+ justice, religious freedom, and immigration. 

The outputs of each workshop included a synthesis of the day’s discussions and a collaboratively developed resource guide. These guides included suggested resources from participants and from our team of researchers. In order to share our learning with a broader audience, we built the ComProp Navigator, where we have collated and organized these resources for you to explore. We hope the tool will be helpful to civil society organizations, but also the general public, as they go about understanding, preparing for, and responding to issues caused by online disinformation. We are grateful to all our workshop partners and participants for making this guide possible.

Methods 

This guide does not aim to be an exhaustive resource list. Rather, we have selected materials that we think are strong representatives of a broader set or are particularly relevant to contexts in which we held workshops: Washington DC, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, New Delhi, London and Brussels, with additional discussions in Oxford and Tunis. As such, there are likely to be great resources that we have yet to encounter or gaps that exist around particular issues.

After receiving resource recommendations from workshop participants and ComProp’s network of researchers, our team vetted them to ensure their quality and relevance. Based on this diverse set of resources and our discussions with civil society groups in the workshops, we arrived at five ‘concern areas.‘ Each of our resources falls into one or two of these concern areas.

Languages

We have attempted to include resources in as many languages as possible. In order to verify the quality of resources in different languages, we held crowdsourcing workshops with graduate students and faculty members at the University of Oxford. In these sessions, contributors verified the quality of the resources and also suggested new items in languages other than English. Through this process, we ensured that at least two people assessed the suitability of each resource in all recommended languages.

Please note that in our “Languages” filter on the resources page, we have only listed languages that we had the capacity to vet in this way. As such, some resources may be available online in more languages than those listed on this site. While we have put efforts into diversifying the content on this website, we want to emphasize that this guide is partial and limited to the languages, contexts, and suggestions of the particular individuals convened across the workshop series.  

If you find certain items particularly helpful or have suggestions for additional resources, please contact us. Your feedback is warmly welcomed.

How We List the Resources

To help users navigate the resources, we have tagged and added filters to each item. We have also pinned certain resources (indicated by a star symbol) that have been flagged by multiple people as being particularly useful for specific concern areas. These resources appear first in our list and can be treated as a first ‘pit-stop.’  We then list the resources alphabetically by the publishing organization. 

Disclaimer  

While we have made efforts to vet all the resources recommended here, the Project on Computational Propaganda cannot assume responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in content shared, and cannot guarantee the completeness or accuracy of resources beyond those we have authored ourselves. 

Use 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – Share Alike 4.0 International License.

It can be cited as: The ComProp Navigator (2019). The Project on Computational Propaganda, Oxford Internet Institute. https://medleysites.oii.ox.ac.uk/navigator/