Sign up for our daily briefing

Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Catch up on the day's biggest business stories

Subscribe to Axios Closer for insights into the day’s business news and trends and why they matter

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Stay on top of the latest market trends

Subscribe to Axios Markets for the latest market trends and economic insights. Sign up for free.

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Sports news worthy of your time

Binge on the stats and stories that drive the sports world with Axios Sports. Sign up for free.

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Tech news worthy of your time

Get our smart take on technology from the Valley and D.C. with Axios Login. Sign up for free.

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Get the inside stories

Get an insider's guide to the new White House with Axios Sneak Peek. Sign up for free.

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Axios on your phone

Get breaking news and scoops on the go with the Axios app.

Download for free.

Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday

Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Want a daily digest of the top Denver news?

Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Want a daily digest of the top Des Moines news?

Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Want a daily digest of the top Twin Cities news?

Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Want a daily digest of the top Tampa Bay news?

Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Want a daily digest of the top Charlotte news?

Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Sign up for Axios NW Arkansas

Stay up-to-date on the most important and interesting stories affecting NW Arkansas, authored by local reporters

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!

Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios

A surge of nefarious activity online has created new businesses, research disciplines and newsroom beats focused on studying and combating internet propaganda.

Why it matters: Americans were mostly caught flat-footed by the sophistication of state-sponsored and fringe misinformation attacks leading up to the 2016 election. Now, a variety of groups — from academics to journalists — are mobilizing to try to stay ahead of it.

The big picture: Every expert Axios has spoken to about fighting misinformation agrees that no one institution has enough visibility to piece together a full picture of the underlying campaigns perpetuated by bad actors.

  • The only way to stay on top of the threat is to increase the attention and resources being spent on learning about online fake news across a variety of sectors.

Non-profits: One leader in the field is the Digital Forensic Research Lab within The Atlantic Council, which has been in close communications with platforms, including Facebook, to help study the campaigns. The Lab has roughly a dozen people in different time zones studying behaviors and patterns of bad actors and fake news.

  • Ben Nimmo, information defense fellow at the Lab, says tracking misinformation campaigns is like "building a jigsaw puzzle with all of the little bits and pieces you find, using as much evidence as you can to piece information together."
  • Other non-profits, like The Knight Foundation, are running programs that grant funds to those that have new ideas about how to spur news literacy and combat fake news.
  • The Data & Science Research Institute, led by founder and president Danah Boyd, is also working to combat fake news through the study and analysis of data-driven automated technologies, including social media platforms. 

For-profits: Businesses have also begun to fight misinformation and vet content online. Storyful, a social media intelligence company bought by News Corp in 2013, aims to find and address misinformation campaigns in real time.

Their clients, ranging from media companies to platforms, rely on them to weed through existing threats and quickly identify new ones.

" While we do have proprietary tools that allow us to monitor a range of platforms at once, we really rely on a symbiotic effort between journalists and technology to help identify patterns in misinformation. Storyful was established as a combo of technology and journalism."
— Padraic Ryan, senior journalist, Storyful

News and advertising industry: The advertising industry has been particularly vigilant about weeding out fake news and misinformation because brands are more wary of placing ads next to untrustworthy content. Groups like Sleeping Giants, which calls out brands that advertise on propagandist websites, have caused thousands of advertisers to flee from websites like Breitbart and Infowars.

  • Longtime journalists Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz launched NewsGuard earlier this year, which will hire dozens of journalists as analysts to review news websites ahead of the midterm elections.
  • Some advertising fraud companies, like White Ops, are using fraud detection tools to help identify behaviors of bad actors using fake news to make money.

Journalists: Prior to the 2016 election, most journalists covered media through the lens of well-known institutions, like cable news. After the election, dozens of newsrooms assigned journalists to beats covering misinformation and fake news. CNN, Buzzfeed News, The Daily Beast and others have been particularly aggressive.

"Prior to the very end of 2016, this was a niche area with a relatively small group of people who cared about it ... There was only a very small group of nerds who knew each other and were doing this work in some element of isolation."
— Craig Silverman, BuzzFeed News media editor who focuses on fake news and information

Academics: More universities and are creating programs to study misinformation and online propaganda.

  • For example, Jonathan Albright, the director of the Digital Forensics Initiative at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, has done extensive research on how the spread of misinformation through ad technology and social media affects elections.
  • Other universities, like Stanford, Vanderbilt and Harvard, are also ramping up research efforts into fake news and misinformation.

Big tech: The tech companies, whose cloud and social media technologies are often being used to host and spread misinformation, are pouring resources into the fight. HP, Google, and others are spending millions into initiatives to fight fake news.

  • Facebook, Google, Twitter and others are implementing programs to fight fake news on their own platforms, and are hiring tens of thousands of contractors to help moderate fake news. But many critics argue they still aren't doing enough, given the enormous revenue they make off of automated content.

The bottom line: Even though the global threat of misinformation is getting bigger as bad actors becomes more sophisticated, there's a much higher level of awareness and attention towards the issue than ever before.

Go deeper

Updated 60 mins ago - Sports

Olympics dashboard

Team USA's Simone Biles watching the women's uneven bars final at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, on Sunday. Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images

🚨: Simone Biles will compete in her final Olympic event

⚽: U.S. women's soccer team falls to Canada in semifinals, ending chances at gold

🏋️‍♀️: Laurel Hubbard becomes first openly trans woman to compete at Olympics

🤸: U.S. gymnast Jade Carey wins Olympic gold in floor exercise final

🪧: IOC "looking into" American Raven Saunders' Olympic podium protest gesture

📷In photos: Day 10 Olympics highlights

🏳️‍⚧️: Axios at the Olympics: Games grapple with trans athletesTrans athletes see the Tokyo Games as a watershed moment

Go deeper: Full Axios coverage

Updated 1 hour ago - Sports

Laurel Hubbard becomes first openly trans woman to compete at Olympics

Laurel Hubbard. Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov\TASS via Getty Images

New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard made history on Monday as the first openly transgender female athlete to compete at the Olympics.

Why it matters: The presence of trans and nonbinary athletes at this year's Games has been celebrated by LGBTQ+ rights advocates, but stirred controversy among critics, who argue trans women have an unfair advantage even after taking hormones to lower their testosterone.

Index fund investors saved $357 billion over last 25 years

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Investors who’ve opted to passively track the stock market haven’t just outperformed most active fund managers. They’ve also saved a ton of money in fees while doing it.

Why it matters: There are loads of active fund managers aiming to beat the returns of funds that track indexes like the S&P 500.

You’ve caught up. Now what?

Sign up for Mike Allen’s daily Axios AM and PM newsletters to get smarter, faster on the news that matters.

Please enter a valid email.

Please enter a valid email.

Subscription failed
Thank you for subscribing!