• Naming names won’t stop abuse on social media

    Elise Thomas     |      October 11, 2021

    Anonymity sometimes cloaks abusive behaviour online, but social media users aren’t necessarily less abusive under their real names, or mandating identification may not resolve the problem.

  • Who was protesting in Melbourne?

    Elise Thomas     |      September 26, 2021

    While union leaders and government officials have blamed the Melbourne protests on the ‘far right’, the truth is far more complicated.

  • Australia’s electoral system isn’t immune to US-style conspiracy theories

    Elise Thomas     |      November 25, 2020

    Australia should build trust in the electoral system through awareness campaigns to educate the public on the voting process, how their votes are counted and the steps being taken to ensure systems are secure.

  • Beware disinformation around COVID vaccines

    Elise Thomas     |      August 24, 2020

    Policymakers, media outlets, social media platforms and vaccine manufacturers should be aware that politically motivated disinformation is only likely to increase as the race for a Covid-19 vaccine intensifies.

  • How social media bots seed social discord

    Elise Thomas     |      August 7, 2020

    The widespread proliferation of low-quality, unsophisticated but persistent disinformation and political influence efforts on social media can crowd out genuine information.

  • Why do conspiracy theorists film themselves spurning face masks?

    Elise Thomas     |      July 30, 2020

    Taking away the immediate validation which conspiracy theorists are showered with when they post these videos online would remove a lot of the reason for making them in the first place.

  • COVID-19 denial is spreading on social media

    Elise Thomas     |      April 16, 2020

    Governments and health authorities should take steps to tackle the growing pockets of coronavirus denialism within their communities, as a war against this invisible enemy cannot be won if people don’t believe it exists.

  • Unleash innovation to fight COVID-19

    Elise Thomas     |      April 2, 2020

    Amid the darkness of the Covid-19 pandemic, the energy of people around the world who are working together to find solutions is a bright spark. Governments and regulators can catch that spark and magnify it to help light a way out of this crisis.

  • The virus of misinformation

    Elise Thomas     |      March 28, 2020

    Chinese and Russian propaganda which skews the Coronavirus outbreak against the West is being shared and spread by Western conspiracy theorists and threatens to undermine the fight against the disease, as well as rewrite its origins to turn fact into fiction.

  • Hacking the headlines

    Elise Thomas     |      February 6, 2020

    Journalists and media organisations should be asking much tougher questions whenever a cybersecurity company tries to shop them a story that sounds a little too cinematic to be true.

  • Bushfires, bots and the spread of disinformation

    Elise Thomas     |      January 16, 2020

    As fire wreaked havoc across large swathes of the country, online Australia battled another crisis in the form of waves of misinformation and disinformation sweeping across social media.

  • Political ‘doxxing’ – A Hong Kong case study

    Elise Thomas     |      October 4, 2019

    Western social media companies must remain alert to the evolving tactics of those who use their platforms as a weapon against the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement.