• The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor announced a Request for Statements of Interest for programs in Iraq that includes efforts to address the spread of disinformation. Up to $3,000,000 available. Submissions due by January 18, 2022. 

• The U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu’s 2022 Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund includes funding opportunities for programs that address disinformation. Up to $40,000 available, per award. Submissions due by January 21, 2022. 

• The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor’s Global LGBTQI+ Inclusive Democracy and Empowerment (GLIDE) Fund includes funding opportunities for programs that counter disinformation in democratic processes. Up to $2,500,000 available. Submissions due by February 4, 2021.  

• The Public Diplomacy Section of the Palestinian Affairs Unit announced an open competition for programs that provide capacity building for journalists, including by improving media literacy and combating mis/disinformation. Up to $150,000 available. Submissions due February by 6, 2022. 

• The U.S. Mission to France’s 2022 Alumni Small Grants Fund includes funding opportunities for programs that address disinformation. Up to $10,000 available, per award. Submissions due by April 10, 2022. 

• U.S. Embassy Kuala Lumpur is funding programs that promote regional security cooperation on countering disinformation. Up to $99,000 available, per award. Submissions due by September 19, 2022. 

• U.S. Embassy Singapore is funding programs that address disinformation. Up to $100,000 available, per award. Submissions due by September 30, 2022.

• The White House Office of Science and Technology, along with federal agencies and domestic and international stakeholders, will provide grants through a series of international challenges to advance technological innovations in support of democracy, including privacy enhancing technologies and censorship circumvention tools (The White House).

• US lawmakers introduced draft legislation that would provide $3 billion in funding to the State Department, USAID, and the National Endowment for Democracy to support global efforts in addressing threats to democracy, including foreign interference, disinformation, digital authoritarianism, and extremism (The Hill).

• The US pledged additional support for independent international journalism through a variety of measures, including a liability fund to help newsrooms combat repressive litigation, support to the International Fund for Public Interest Media, and the Media Viability Accelerator, a new USAID initiative to help news outlets be more sustainable (CNN).

• Major tech companies are enacting information safeguards ahead of France’s 2022 presidential election, with Google launching a partnership with Agence France-Presse to support newsrooms and Meta providing politicians with greater online protection (EURACTIV).

• Australia’s information disorder is fueling public distrust in government institutions, experts, and social media platforms, undermining the country’s ability to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighting the need for rapid government and academic partnerships to map the roots of the crisis (The Guardian).

• In addition to extending its COVID-19 disinformation monitoring program until June 2022, the EU will extend its Code of Practice on Disinformation until March 2022, with 26 new potential signatories coming on board, including a broader range of stakeholders like civil society groups, ad agencies, and research organizations (EURACTIV). 

• Central and Eastern Europe remains largely susceptible to influence operations due to a variety of factors, including Russia and China’s continued interference in the region, the involvement of domestic elites in spreading disinformation, and weak educational systems, highlighting the importance of democratic renewal in the region as well as stronger counter messaging against authoritarian interference (EU Observer).

• Slovakia is experiencing a growing number of disinformation campaigns from both domestic and foreign sources, including China, which seeks to improve its image in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia, which aims to foster polarization, according to the country’s Information Service (EURACTIV).

• Belarusian state media’s increasingly critical coverage of the EU and Eastern Partnership is unlikely to shift public opinion due to the public’s low levels of trust in government and increasing preference for independent media sources (EUvsDisinfo).

• The Indian government’s efforts to limit end-to-end encryption through traceability laws are facing significant pushback from industry and civil society, which claim that the proposed measures fail to address the root causes of mis/disinformation on closed channels and risk harming users’ freedom of speech and privacy rights (The Print).

• Online extremist subcultures are converging as distrust of governing institutions and hate towards minorities drive varied groups, including jihadists and neo-Nazis, to share narratives, imagery, and organizational tactics (Wired).

• Like disinformation, ransomware has the ability to foster chaos, erode institutional trust, and inflame geopolitical tensions, especially as states increasingly use intermediaries to hide behind politically motivated attacks, which can lead to rumors and conspiracy theories (Coda).

• China’s efforts to launder information operations through Canadian news outlets and social media are becoming normalized, as it exploits the lack of oversight and inserts advertorials in short-staffed newsrooms to push its own narratives, influence politics, and chill the free speech of Chinese-Canadians, highlighting the need for greater media regulation (CBC).

• China’s rapid and widespread censorship of Peng Shuai on domestic social media highlights how the CCP effectively uses content moderation to weaken civil society, isolate politically inconvenient views, and control public opinion (Wired).

• China’s recent efforts to portray its governance as a novel form of democracy draws on the CCP’s longstanding efforts to manipulate discourse around democracy in order to preserve and legitimize its authoritarian rule (Quartz).

• The Chinese government employs tailored strategic narratives to engage with specific NATO member states, and uses increasingly confrontational tactics that aim to stifle free speech within the bloc, highlighting the need for NATO to invest in long-term social resilience and actively engage in strategic communications to shape its own narrative (NATO STRATCOM COE). 

• As Russia continues an unprecedented military buildup around Ukraine, pro-Kremlin media outlets are downplaying the situation while simultaneously framing it as a response to provocative, aggressive actions by NATO (EUvsDisinfo).

• The EU imposed sanctions on Russian private military contractor, Wagner Group, and other Russian- and Syrian-based entities suspected of financing mercenaries across Ukraine, Libya, and Syria (Al Jazeera).

• The 2021 Summit for Democracy offers the opportunity to advance democratic renewal locally, nationally, and globally, including through efforts to strengthen independent media groups dedicated to exposing disinformation, especially around elections, develop a shared framework on effective platform regulation, and ensure mutual deterrence against foreign digital interference (Brookings, The Hill).

• The US intelligence community should invest in modernizing its intelligence collection and analysis capacity, as malign actors increasingly rely on gray zone activities to achieve their strategic goals, including through the use of advanced AI-powered disinformation operations (CSIS).

• The European Union is poised to pass its landmark regulation on digital platforms, the Digital Services Act, in mid-2022, with the potential to set a new global standard for democracies, although major challenges remain, including around balancing freedom of speech and regulation, the effect it will have on journalists and advertisers, and enforcement by Brussels and national capitals (Columbia Journalism Review).

• Amid concerns about the Digital Services Act potentially delegating regulatory powers to large platforms and adding an additional layer of scrutiny to news organizations’ editorial process, European media organizations are calling for non-discriminatory access for editorial publications, protection of press content online, and transparency into platforms’ algorithms (EURACTIV).

• Civil society could benefit from greater platform access and more funding to shore up their unique counter-disinformation capabilities and to share tools and lessons learned in support of a networked counter-disinformation response that would leverage the vast experiences of activists, journalists, and others (NED).

• Despite increased instances of election interference, foreign influence, and disinformation, European state-led responses continue to lag behind these malign operations, highlighting the need for greater coordination and assertiveness in exposing perpetrators and addressing internal sources and factors fueling disinformation, while also focusing on the business model of online platforms that perpetuate such operations (The Hague Program for Cyber Norms).

• Malign actors, ranging from state-backed trolls to individuals seeking to make money, have spread disinformation through YouTube by producing and distributing low-cost videos that often mimic legitimate news channels (Yahoo News).

• Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are suing Facebook for $150 billion over the platform’s negligence to remove hate speech that fueled real-world violence against the group (The Hill).

• Meta expanded its ban on Myanmar’s military to include affiliated private industry, resulting in the removal of dozens of pages, groups, and accounts across Facebook (Financial Times).

• Meta will begin using a new AI content moderation system, Few-Shot Learner, that can operate in more than 100 languages, analyze images and text, and work faster than previous systems (Wired).

• Spaces, Twitter’s live audio chat feature, is becoming a hub for extremist content and misinformation due to its lack of human content moderators and technology to scan audio content in real-time, as well as inadvertent amplification by Twitter recommendation algorithms (Washington Post).