Comment archive

Monday, 27 Mar 2023
Soft Power and Disinformation: The Strategic Role of Media in Wagner’s Expansion in Africa

After its first steps on the African continent in Libya in 2017, the Wagner Group has been deployed in Sudan, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Central African Republic, and at the end of 2021 in Mali. This rapid expansion over the years contributes to the instability and insecurity in these regions. The ...

Wednesday, 16 Mar 2022
The Digital Battlefield

Photos, stories and videos featuring victims of the war in Ukraine are spreading all over the world on social media. This will change our perception of war. So far, cyber attacks and cyber operations have played a smaller role than expected in the warfare in Ukraine, social media on the ...

Friday, 5 Feb 2021
Facebook's Power in Myanmar

Facebook is Myanmar’s dominant media platform. Now the country is again a dictatorship. In 2018, Facebook banned commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing for his role in the expulsion of the Rohingya. Now, as the country’s new dictator, he temporarily shuts down Facebook. Myanmar’s many conflicts have given Facebook director Mark Zuckerberg ...

Tuesday, 9 Jun 2020
The Role of State-Supported Disinformation in the Wake of COVID-19

On April 1 the European External Action Service (EEA) released a report alleging China and Russia had carried out a coordinated disinformation campaign around the origin and the spread of COVID-19 to sway public opinion abroad and create divisions among EU members. The report claims that China and Russia are ...

Tuesday, 7 Jan 2020
The Rise and Fall of the Twitter Revolution

The year 2019 ended with a new wave of non-violent protests. In every corner of the world there have been huge movements gathering. This marks the end of a decade that opened with the Arab Spring; a decade that might go down in history as the decade of mass protests. ...

Thursday, 9 Aug 2018
We researched Russian trolls and figured out exactly how they neutralise certain news

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Russian “troll factories” have been making headlines for some time. First, as the Kremlin’s digital guardians in the Russian blogosphere. Then, as subversive cyber-squads meddling with US elections. While there has been much sensationalist talk about troll brigades, ...

Tuesday, 21 Mar 2017
Trump and Threats to Truth, Democracy and Peace

Stein Tønnesson delivered this year’s The Fjord Memorial Lecture  at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer. The lecture discusses Trump’s team of advisors, calls for fighting the increasing use of lies in political campaigning, sees Trump’s election as having weakened democracy worldwide, and perceives a major risk to world ...

Wednesday, 23 Nov 2016
Get to Know Your Data Double!

We all have a “data double”. But how well do you really know this other aspect of your identity? Unless you know what your entirely digital identity looks like, you should take responsibility for finding out and, at the same time, contribute to a digital drive to ensure that we ...

Friday, 2 Sep 2016
A Bug in the System

Palestine does not exist on the map and is also not easy to find in the jam-packed schedules of diplomats working with the Middle East. A Twitter storm was unleashed a couple of weeks ago when rumours spread among pro-Palestinian activists that Google had removed Palestine from its mapping service. ...

Thursday, 10 Mar 2016
From the House of Cards to House of Data?

The fourth season of the Netflix series House of Cards was released worldwide on the 4th March. Which is to say, the week-end when many International Relations (IR) researchers are still rushing to finalize their conference paper for the annual convention of the International Studies Association (ISA). And, if you ...

Monday, 9 Nov 2015
Segregation Kills: How Social Media Fuels Violence in African States

Pundits and academics alike tell us that we are supremely fortunate to be living in a new “information age.” However, new findings which I present in an article in a Journal of Peace Research special issue paint a far more complicated picture of the consequences of increased human connectivity. Ours ...

Monday, 26 Oct 2015
When Internet Access Becomes a Weapon

Social Media has rightly been celebrated as an empowering tool for ordinary citizens to mobilize against repressive rulers, and make marginalized voices heard. But a crucial question remains unanswered: why should power-hungry states, with de facto control over access to the Internet, impassively concede to defeat? The simple answer is: they ...

Thursday, 23 Apr 2015
Social Media Responses to this Winter’s Terror Attacks

Social media have brought Kenya into focus recently, with people’s reactions to the attack at the University of Garissa spreading on Facebook and Twitter. Social media users have been sharing an image of a candle against a black background, accompanied by the single word “Kenya”. In this way they have ...

Thursday, 26 Feb 2015
Dial ICT for Conflict? Four Lessons on Conflict and Contention in the Info Age

The past decade has witnessed an explosion of interest among political scientists in the outbreak and dynamics of civil wars. Much of this research has been facilitated by the rise of electronic media, including newspapers but extending to social media (Twitter, Facebook) that permit the collection of fine-grained data on ...

Tuesday, 25 Jun 2013
Ethical Challenges of Internet Research on 22/7

For my research on post-22/7 resilience and social media, I am drawing on data sources from the internet. Even though this data is publicly available, there are several ethical issues to be considered. A core controversy of internet-based research is the definition of public and private space: speakers may assume ...