#EUDisinfo2024: Mission NOT Accomplished: Unintended Fallbacks From Investigations

What has the community-fighting disinformation learned from past mistakes? What are the unintended consequences of fighting disinformation? What happens when defenders mislead, and what can we do next with what we learned?

Our Executive Director, Victoire Rio, joined Maria Giovanna Sessa and Jack Brewster to talk about her disinformation f*ckups and what she learned from interventions that backfired.

Victoire shared about her experience investigating and exposing a well-known military propaganda persona in Myanmar. She discussed how her team leveraged the national press, global media, and even the UN, to try to hold this actor accountable. She reflected on how the global exposure ultimately fueled - rather than undermined - this actor’s desire for notoriety and made him an even greater monster in the absence of pathways to accountability.

As part of her talk, Victoire also stressed the importance of improving the diagnosis of the motivations of disinformers, highlighting how strategies that might work against some motivations can actively backfire when used against other types of motivations.