IScann Group (ISG) a strategic communications company driven by OSINT (open-source intelligence) and data analytics, announced efforts to mitigate the impact of disinformation and misinformation threats on communities and individuals.
The idea behind IScann’s Operation: Pluto is to to mitigate the impact of disinformation by focusing on people, who are the ultimate targets of the disinformation campaign. The group acknowledges that it is too late to stem the flow of disinformation-misinformation, let alone eliminate it entirely. According to the initiative’s Whitepaper, debating whether a piece of questionable information is true or false distracts us from the real question: What, if anything, is the intent behind a piece of information?
Operation: Pluto will seek to first understand why these threats have such a profound impact, particularly on post-truth communities and societies. As opposing sides no longer trust each other’s facts and sources, empathy for alternative perspectives is on the decline, the disinformation-misinformation awareness gap is widening, and the attention economy rewards content that gets the most clicks, not content that prioritises journalistic integrity, the challenge is finding tangible and realistic solutions that address these issues.
Thus, the campaign will focus on helping people to understand disinformation-misinformation in holistic and tangible ways, challenging them to inspect their own information consumption habits and recognise such campaigns for what they are. In other words, the initiative seeks to move the conversation away from the integrity of the information itself and focus on raising awareness around the intent behind the information.
“History has warned us repeatedly not to underestimate the threat that disinformation poses. In this era of information proliferation, disinformation campaigns have never been cheaper, easier, and more targeted,” James Chao, Chief Strategy Officer IScann Group said.
London-based IScann Group is an intelligence company that leverages open-source information to enable organisations to derive timely, relevant and actionable data-driven insights, based on a proprietary intelligence gathering approach.
Image source: iscanngroup.com
