How disinformation works-and how to counter it

News Snapshot:

Did you know that the wildfires which ravaged Hawaii last summer were started by a secret “weather weapon" being tested by America’s armed forces, and that American ngos were spreading dengue fever in Africa? That Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, went on a $1.1m shopping spree on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue? Or that Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has been endorsed in a new song by Mahendra Kapoor, an Indian singer who died in 2008? These stories are, of course, all bogus. They are examples of disinformation: falsehoods that are intended to deceive. Such tall tales are being spread around the...