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Brazil and Mexico: Domestic disinformation in the context of COVID-19
Brazil Disinformation Latin America Mexico

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Nicolas Maduro

In-Depth Research & Reports

Apr 7, 2021

Digital Autocracy: Maduro’s control of the Venezuelan information environment

By Esteban Ponce de León, Daniel Suárez Pérez

A 16-month monitoring report that analyzes the information environment in Venezuela, exploring the Maduro regime’s tactics when promoting influence operations in the country and abroad.

Disinformation Latin America

Issue briefs and reports

Jun 5, 2020

Operation Carthage: How a Tunisian company conducted influence operations in African presidential elections

By Andy Carvin, Luiza Bandeira, Graham Brookie, Iain Robertson, Nika Aleksejeva, Alyssa Kann, Kanishk Karan, Ayushman Kaul, Tessa Knight, Jean le Roux, Roman Osadchik, Esteban Ponce de Leon

A Tunisia-based company operated a sophisticated digital campaign involving multiple social media platforms and websites in an attempt to influence the country’s 2019 presidential election, as well as other recent elections in Africa. In an exclusive investigation that began in September 2019, the DFRLab uncovered dozens of online assets with connections to Tunisian digital communications firm UReputation. On June 5, 2020, after conducting its own investigation, Facebook announced it had taken down more than 900 assets affiliated with the UReputation operation, including 182 user accounts, 446 pages, and 96 groups, as well as 209 Instagram accounts. The operation also involved the publication of multiple Francophone websites, some going back more than five years.

Africa Disinformation


Esteban Ponce de León is a resident fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) of the Atlantic Council. Esteban specializes in open-source research, online disinformation, and influence operations, with a focus on developing open-source intelligence tools and research methods grounded in data science. His work focuses in developing methods to integrate artificial intelligence models into digital research workflows to enhance open research, as well as developing methodology frameworks to assess artificial intelligence language models capabilities and risks for the information environment.