Reaffirming America's Strategic Alliances

The most important step in countering disinformation is measuring the public’s awareness of the threat. NATO and its members are facing a growing threat in the form of disinformation campaigns that can be traced back to authoritarian regimes and their proxies. Much of this “weaponized” information is aimed at weakening confidence in member state governments and in the alliance itself. While Russia poses the most immediate threat, China and others are also engaged in such campaigns. In addition, NATO and its members must communicate NATO’s importance and pursue forward-looking policy making. In partnership with Bakamo Social, the McCain Institute has created an interactive dashboard displaying unique data on public perception of NATO and mis- and disinformation. This dashboard presents analysis of disinformation based on explicit discussions on disinformation to shed light on the level of awareness of the threat, not the presence of adversarial narratives. The analysis discriminates between discussion in the media and peoples’ organic discourse¹ and also displays the evolution of the conversation over time. This project was made possible by a grant from the U.S. mission to NATO.