CNA Verify: Our first year investigating disinformation

Over the past year, thousands of social media posts have been circulating and spreading falsehoods about Singapore’s political leadership, economic survival, and foreign policy, including recent made-up allegations about Singapore’s hand in the affairs of its neighbours.These manipulative posts, which have already chalked up tens of millions of views, either favour the view of a major state actor or look to sow seeds of division within society. They are designed to create tensions between communities, influence public opinion or to have damaging implications for Singapore's national interests and relations with other countries.These are just some of the campaigns uncovered by recent investigations by CNA.Welcome to the world of disinformation campaigns.Using synthetic voices, images of famous individuals, or beautiful AI-generated women – these campaigns cite fictitious statistics, made-up allegations, skewed narratives, or distortions of fact. With AI, they are cheap to produce, repeated often and distributed widely using social media platforms. They are also often amplified by coordinated networks of accounts.One feature of modern disinformation is that it does not always consist of entirely fabricated material. Disinformation narratives are sometimes built around genuine events, authentic images, real people, or accurate information. This blending of fact and fiction can make such disinformation content harder to recognise and more convincing to audiences.It was against this backdrop that we set up CNA Verify a year ago.LOOKING BEYOND INDIVIDUAL FALSE CLAIMSCNA Verify comprises a dedicated team within our newsroom to investigate disinformation campaigns and influence operations, particularly those targeting Singapore.There is an important distinction between investigating disinformation and fact-checking.Checking facts and verifying information are basic responsibilities of trusted journalism. Every reporter, producer and editor at CNA is expected to do this as part and parcel of their daily work. It is not a task reserved or outsourced to a specialist team.CNA Verify has a different remit. Its focus is to investigate disinformation operations - how they are organised, the tactics used, and how misleading narratives are created and spread.This means looking beyond individual false claims to examine tactics used to create and disseminate misleading information, patterns of behaviour of coordinated networks, fabricated identities and other methods used to manipulate or deceive audiences.Since January, CNA Verify has published a dozen reports that illustrate the nature, extent, and intent of several such campaigns. The work draws on investigative reporting, as well as specialised techniques such as open-source intelligence, digital forensics, and data analysis.CNA Verify uses AI-assisted analysis to examine large collections of videos, transcripts, and social media activity, looking for patterns that may indicate coordination. These tools help our journalists identify leads and connections that would be difficult to uncover manually.But the findings must still be checked, analysed, assessed, and reported by journalists applying the same stringent editorial standards as the rest of our newsroom.Establishing who is ultimately responsible for a disinformation operation is particularly difficult. Those involved may conceal their identities, use intermediaries, or operate across multiple platforms and jurisdictions. In several investigations, the team found patterns suggesting coordinated activity without being able to establish definitively who directed it.Several of the investigations have led to action. Social media platforms have removed accounts flagged by CNA Verify, websites falsely claiming links to Singapore institutions have gone offline, and questions arising from the reporting have been raised in parliament.CNA VERIFY PART OF PUBLIC SERVICE JOURNALISMWhy are we committing newsroom resources to examine activities that may otherwise go unnoticed or unexplained? Because they have implications for Singapore and its people.For CNA, maintaining the trust of our audiences depends on the accuracy, balance, context, and depth of our reporting. Investigating disinformation is now part of that responsibility.The methods used to spread disinformation are continuing to evolve.One emerging area we are exploring is the deliberate manipulation of information used by large language models (LLMs), sometimes referred to as "LLM poisoning". As more people turn to AI-powered search and chatbots for information, there is a risk that false or misleading material deliberately planted online could be retrieved in their answers.Disinformation actors are exploring ways to exploit these LLMs, including by creating apparently credible sources or flooding the digital space to influence AI-generated responses. Unlike a misleading social media post, such information may reach users as part of a seemingly authoritative answer, without them being aware of its origins.This is still a relatively new area for CNA. We are still learning and building our expertise.We also recognise that no single newsroom can investigate every disinformation campaign. So, we hope to build relationships with like-minded teams in other Asia-Pacific newsrooms to exchange knowledge, share techniques and explore opportunities for collaboration.Through our reporting, we hope to deepen public understanding of these disinformation operations. We hope this work will give you another reason to place your trust in CNA.