Virality Project

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Stanford Internet Observatory's Virality Project seeks to control information by suppressing alleged "disinformation" related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Summary

According to their website, the Virality Project is "a global study aimed at understanding the disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19 crisis."

"In January 2020, the Stanford Internet Observatory expanded this project in collaboration with colleagues at New York University, the University of Washington, the National Council on Citizenship, and Graphika."

About

Verbatim from the Virality Project website:

The Stanford Internet Observatory's Virality Project is a new global study aimed at understanding disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19 crisis. As the pandemic became the primary concern of almost every nation on the planet, the virus significantly shifted the landscape for viral mis- and disinformation.

At the Stanford Internet Observatory our mission is to study the misuse of the internet to cause harm, and to help create policy and technical mitigations to those harms. Over the past year, researchers at SIO have investigated disinformation from a variety of actors: governments, spammers, mercenaries, and domestic groups. We’ve studied covert operation tactics, such as social media manipulation campaigns, as well as overt propaganda strategies from state media leveraging technology for public diplomacy. In our work we have demonstrated that online actors all have their own topics, motivations and techniques. This diversity has often impeded comparative analysis on questions such as how the capabilities of major state actors differ.

The global COVID-19 crisis has significantly shifted the landscape for mis- and disinformation as the pandemic has become the primary concern of almost every nation on the planet. This has perhaps never happened before; few topics have commanded and sustained attention at a global level simultaneously, or provided such a wealth of opportunities for governments, economically motivated actors, and domestic activists alike to spread malign narratives in service to their interests. In response, the Stanford Internet Observatory is launching the Virality Project, a global study aimed at understanding the disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19 crisis.

We have a unique opportunity to address several outstanding research questions:

Tactics: How do governments leverage the full scope of media and social media capabilities - overt and covert - to spread particular narratives? What can we learn about state information capabilities from this crisis?

Priorities: What do government information operations tell us about their geopolitical priorities?

Actors: What role do groups that are partially aligned or not aligned with governments, such as groups opposed to vaccination, play in these information operations? To what extent do these groups coordinate?

Interaction between government narratives and local communities: What is the relationship between government narratives, user-generated content, participatory dissemination, and mass media?

Over the next several months, you will see posts by our research teams exploring the information environment and actions of seven states as they experience and combat COVID-19: the United States, Russia, the People’s Republic of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Brazil. Our work will focus on the narratives these states deploy for domestic and foreign audiences, as well as the activities of powerful non-state groups acting independently for their own financial and political benefit. We will use similar methodologies in each country to provide both qualitative and quantitative views into COVID-19-related narratives, conflicts and influence operations in each of these countries. Our goal is to help inform the global public debate on the proper role of government and private actors in our information ecosystem.

This work is being funded by pre-existing grants by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and the Hewlett Foundation...

Follows on Twitter

As of March 30, 2023, the Virality Project follows the following individuals/Organizations on Twitter:

• Vivek Murthy
• Graphika
• National Conference on Citizenship
• Election Integrity Partnership
• New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics
• NYU Tandon
• University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public
• Stanford Internet Observatory

Twitter Files

According to a Twitter Files thread, the Virality Project was "a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billons of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs."

"On February 5, 2021, just after Joe Biden took office, Stanford wrote to Twitter to discuss the Virality Project. By the 17th, Twitter agreed to join and got its first weekly report on “anti-vax disinformation,” which contained numerous true stories."

Further, the Virality Project "knowingly targeted true material and legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong itself."

Also observed:,

"This story is important for two reasons. One, as Orwellian proof-of-concept, the Virality Project was a smash success. Government, academia, and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging. Two, it accelerated the evolution of digital censorship, moving it from judging truth/untruth to a new, scarier model, openly focused on political narrative at the expense of fact.

Reason

Excerpt from Reason, in the wake of the Twitter Files report:

"Researchers at Stanford University—in partnership with several nonprofits that have received government funding—worked with social media platforms to flag and suppress commentary on COVID vaccines, science, and policy that contradicted public health officials' stances, even when that commentary was true.

This new information comes from yet another Twitter Files entry of screenshotted emails and reports from independent journalist Matt Taibbi that reveals the back and forth between the Stanford-led Virality Project and receptive Twitter executives about policing alleged COVID misinformation on its platform.

Beginning in February 2021, and continuing with regular reports, Virality Project researchers encouraged Twitter to expand its misinformation policies to include true reports of vaccine side effects, criticism of vaccine passport systems for their imposition on rights and freedoms, and even discussion of legitimate scientific research on breakthrough infections on natural immunity.

Researchers with the project explicitly flagged "true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy," including other countries banning certain vaccines because of their health side effects. While individual true stories about negative vaccine side effects were not treated as misinformation or disinformation, they could be labeled "malinformation" if they exaggerated or misled people, said researchers.

"Stanford researchers, and later Twitter staff themselves, also flagged campaigns against vaccine passports as a worrisome bridge forming between the anti-vaccine community and the wider "right-wing media sphere."

[...]

"In April 2022, the Virality Project issued a report calling for the creation of a new government agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that focused on misinformation and disinformation.

DHS briefly tried to create that board but then backed down after an intense public backlash to its authoritarian potential.

Virality Project researchers took exception to politicians like Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) relying on research published by the Cleveland Clinic showing no benefits of vaccination to already infected individuals to make the case for protective natural immunity.

The stated concern was that legitimate scientific research was being used to "sow mistrust in American public health institutions."

"Some of the Virality Project's partner organizations received funding from the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. The project also said it had developed "strong ties" with federal government agencies.

There's been a lot of reporting already (including from Reason) on the efforts by government agencies to pressure social media companies to police COVID speech they deemed false or misleading.

The latest Twitter Files shows that the definition of what's considered damaging misinformation is being stretched to include true things that might cause the public to react in ways that don't meet the approval of public health officials.

Team

The final report was authored in part by Elena Cryst, Renee DiResta, and Lily Meyersohn., It called for "the creation of a new government agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that focused on misinformation and disinformation."

Contributors included:

• Taylor Agajanian
• Alyssa Kann
• Osiris Cruz-Antonio
• Kathy Liu
• Elena Cryst
• Matt Masterson
• Renee DiResta
• Erin McAweeney
• Kaitlyn Dowling
• Lily Meyersohn
• Laura Edelson
• Carly Miller
• Kris Fortmann
• Chase Small
• Toni Friedman
• Abigail Tarquino
• Cameron Hickey
• Julia Thompson
• Zoe Huczok
• Kyle Weiss
• Lindsay Hurley
• Edited by Eden Beck
• Designed by David Thiel

"This project was supported by a team of researchers and analysts who dedicated their time during the full monitoring period: Sam Bradshaw, Nicole Buckley, Jack Cable, Julienne Ching, Emma Dolan, Paul Duke, Isabella Garcia-Camargo, Josh Goldstein, Jennifer John, Katie Jonsson, Connor Klentschy, Kolina Koltai, Kathy Liu, Pierce Lowary, Damon McCoy, Rachel Moran, Ashwin Ramaswami, Zeve Sanderson, Joey Schafer, Isaac Schaider, Divya Suresh Kumar, Alex Zaheer.

"We would like to acknowledge feedback and support from the following colleagues:

• Dan Bateyko
• Michael Caulfield
• Chris Giles
• Kate Starbird
• David Thiel

Others involved in the Virality Project included Isabella Garcia-Camargo and Chase Small.