Conference Agenda

This article aims to contribute to the field of disinformation research by presenting an analytical framework for empirical studies, referred to as the Hexagon of Disinformation. Recognizing disinformation as a socio-discursive phenomenon primarily present on social media platforms, the Hexagon consists of six dimensions: individual, social, technological, economic-financial, political, and institutional. These dimensions can be examined individually or in combination to enable a more systemic analysis of disinformation.

Digital media scholarship has often attempted to determine the role of social media technologies, such as news feed algorithms, in promoting disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. But as Daniel Kreiss has argued, this work can make the mistake of privileging “the analysis of media problems over political ones,” leading to an approach that risks becoming “deeply presentist.” On the other hand, work that has examined the political and historical dimensions of disinformation and propaganda has tended to minimize the role of the internet and other technologies in these phenomena.

In this paper, I challenge both of these approaches by unearthing a specific history of right-wing digital technology usage in the 1990s. I show how a group of elite conservative activists came to see networked digital technologies as a route to waging a “war of ideas” against mass media and public schools. Throughout the decade, they launched experiments through Compuserve, satellite broadcasting, and the early World Wide Web, making use of the specific affordances of each. In the process, they helped build out a networked infrastructure of conservative ideas. By the end of the decade, digital media sources were filled with accounts challenging scientific consensus on issues ranging from evolution to global warming to the gender wage gap. Ultimately, this history sheds light on the nature of online disinformation, suggesting that political and technological factors have played an important role in shaping the current ecosystem--and that our current definitions of "disinformation" remain limited.

This paper examines the implications of the Twitter Files Brazil (TFB) controversy for the debate on platform governance, focusing on issues of transparency, moderation, and sovereignty. How has the TFB case contributed to the political manipulation of platform governance and accountability? The study combines network analysis of posts from April 2024 and historical data to map accounts early flagged for coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) and analyze the spread of disinformation on the platform. We also analysed the top shared posts to identify disinformation claims. Our findings reveal a polarized network, split into two distinct communities: one led by far-right U.S. and Brazilian far-right and the other by Brazilian progressive influencers. It highlights the role of far-right leaders in Brazil, who leveraged accusations against the Brazilian government to delegitimize national institutions, particularly the Supreme Court. 30.34% of the accounts engaged on sharings were previously flagged for CIB. We argue that these dynamics reflect a broader pattern of platform selective transparency, which contributes to weaponize opacity and undermine democratic digital governance. The lack of transparency hides that, beyond the legal requests for platform data and moderation, X actively arbitrates removals and boosts without accountability, including falsehoods driven by political propaganda. The study highlights how digital platforms, particularly in the Global South, play a crucial role in the international spread of disinformation, linking it to critiques of digital colonialism.

Social media is increasingly used by state actors to disseminate disinformation, often to reshape or sanitize narratives surrounding their actions against marginalized groups they suppress or oppose. While extensive research exists on mis- and disinformation as a political tactic, particularly on social media, less attention has been given to how historical revisionism is employed by state actors to justify irredentist claims—especially when these distorted narratives are constructed and disseminated transnationally over social media. This paper examines this phenomenon through the case of Azerbaijan’s territorial claims toward Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia proper, analyzing social media’s role in amplifying disinformation narratives that support irredentism, displacement, and genocide and how marginalized epistemologies are weaponized to justify territorial ambitions. The author will conduct a critical qualitative content analysis of English language accounts associated with the Azerbaijani state on the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), where they are most active. Preliminary findings suggest that the Azerbaijani government and affiliated state actors utilize English-language social media posts to transnationally disseminate disinformation and propaganda that frames them as the disproportionate victims of Armenian aggression. These narratives incorporate historical revisionism and the co-optation of emancipatory language to construct the narrative that Azerbaijanis are the rightful Indigenous peoples of the South Caucasus, while Armenians—particularly those in Karabakh—are portrayed as invaders. These narratives serve to justify Azerbaijan’s ongoing occupation of Karabakh, threats of violence against Armenia, and the further subjugation of Armenians online through “trolling” as a tool of information warfare.