
Source Hacking [pdf] - headalgorithm
https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Source-Hacking_Hi-res.pdf
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headalgorithm
Summary:

In recent years there has been an increasing number of online manipulation
campaigns targeted at news media. This report focuses on a subset of
manipulation campaigns that rely on a strategy we call source hacking: a set
of techniques for hiding the sources of problematic information in order to
permit its circulation in mainstream media. Source hacking is therefore an
indirect method for targeting journalists—planting false information in places
that journalists are likely to encounter it or where it will be taken up by
other intermediaries.

Across eight case studies, we identify the underlying techniques of source
hacking to provide journalists, news organizations, platform companies, and
others with a new vocabulary for describing these tactics, so that terms such
as “trolling” and “trending” do not stand in for concerted efforts to pollute
the information environment.

