Every day, millions of interactions happen on social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These interactions, including the sharing of propaganda and injection of polarising narratives, can provide valuable insight—if you know where to look and how to understand them in context.
Our Digital Investigation Analysts use their open source intelligence skills to identify, gather, map, analyse and attribute intelligence signals that may be a risk to business operations or personnel safety. This is not an automated monitoring service; our experience and knowledge enable us to make sense of how various threat groups use social media—from terrorist recruitment to disinformation campaigns—and how this can impact business operations and wider activities.
Nations and organisations use our services to support their ongoing management of risk.
Subscribe to our Digital Threat Digest, insights from the PGI team into disinformation, information operations, and online harms.
Our key services include:
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Disinformation - Understand, Map, Attribute, Advise Read more Read less
At its core, disinformation is the spread of false information with the deliberate objective of causing harm, but it can manifest in multiple ways; from anti-vaxx content to political manipulation.
The Protection Group International Social Media Intelligence team have a practiced approach to disinformation, having run a variety of projects—within dozens of geographies—incorporating an element of these various manifestations. While the tactics of malicious actors using disinformation have evolved and diversified over the years to become increasingly sophisticated, so too has our monitoring, detection, and analytical capabilities; including the ability to attribute networks to real, traceable actors.
There are three individual aspects of the disinformation process that we focus on:
- Content – what narrative is the disinformation targeting
- Seeding – where and how the disinformation was planted
- Amplification – was the disinformation amplified, and if so how
Assessing each of these components allows our analysts to communicate both the standalone impact of a particular piece of disinformation and contextualise it within the wider information environment. This full picture context enables our clients to more accurately manage the risk the threat poses to their operations, people, and bottom line.
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Electoral Integrity Monitoring Read more Read less
The viability and honesty of elections form the basis of democracy. Disinformation campaigns and other influence operations—with the aim of voter manipulation and incitement—have increased significantly, with hate speech, coordinated inauthentic behaviour and polarisation threatening this vital aspect of our society.
We have worked with government organisations and country stakeholders to monitor social media platforms to identify disinformation campaigns that can impact or, in extremis, change the tide of an election.
The approaches our specialists use enable them to detect information operations before they become a problem trend. This early detection provides our clients with the intelligence they need to mitigate the impact.
By monitoring keywords and mapping networks, our analysts identify signals that form part of wider campaigns to influence voter intention. Identifying polarising narratives and analysing the spaces in which information operations are deployed allow our analysts to trace these campaigns upstream and attribute them to hostile actors at both domestic and foreign levels.
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Hate Speech – Understand, Map, Advise Read more Read less
The pervasiveness of online hate speech threatens democratic values, social stability and peace. The continued growth and spread of hate speech impacts the work many organisations are investing into human rights and protection of minorities, prevention of atrocity crime and gender-based violence, counterterrorism and violent extremism prevention activities, refugee protection and the fight against racism and discrimination.
Understanding and mapping hate speech is a crucial element of countering the issue. It supports a coordinated response that aims to tackle the root causes and drivers, as well as its impact on victims and societies.
The Protection Group International Social Media Intelligence team works with governments, tech platforms, NGOs, and corporations to contextualise hate speech and enable effective management. Our team use their geopolitical expertise—across all regions—and intelligence analysis skills to understand and baseline hate speech to generate a comprehensive map within a specific context, using data-driven approaches, like advanced sentiment analysis.
From this, we can provide strategic advice on how to counter hate speech and limit the impact on your people, assets and reputation.
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Digital harassment management Read more Read less
Online bullying and harassment are not new problems, but with the continued rise of coordinated information operations, the issue has become more prevalent and powerful in impacting the reputations of individuals and organisations – with costly consequences.
Protection Group International’s Social Media Intelligence team use their deep knowledge of online platforms, threat actor behaviour and networking, alongside our proprietary in-house tools to identify, map-out and build action plans against malicious actors. We allow our clients to reclaim their narratives and implement suitable sanctions against those working to harm them.
Our experts can also securely archive all material to provide evidence for use in legal action and cooperation with law enforcement.
Why choose PGI
PGI’s Intelligence team is made up of a diverse group of professionals who are highly skilled at discreet information gathering, analysis and reporting. Their in-depth understanding of a range of industries enable them to provide the context around information that turns it into actionable intelligence.
We understand that every client and every business has different needs and goals. That’s why we don’t apply a one-size-fits-all approach; every project we undertake is bespoke to ensure we achieve the short-, medium- and long-term goals our clients are aiming for.
While we’re based in the UK, our team have worked with organisations all over the world to help them make sound business decisions—our Analysts speak 16 languages and have a trusted network of in-country associates who each complement our world-class analysis and quality assurance procedures.
Subscribe to PGI’s Digital Threat Digest, a review of what we think you need to know about disinformation, information operations, and online harms.
Our other intelligence services
In the media - 27 July, 2022
There’s more to TikTok than cute dancing, The Philippine Star - Kristoffer Rada, Head of Public Policy for TikTok Philippines
There’s more to TikTok than cute dancing, The Philippine Star - Kristoffer Rada, Head of Public Policy for TikTok PhilippinesIn the media - 6 May, 2022
The war in Ukraine challenges the relevance of culture wars, Media Diversity Institute - Lizzie Cernik
The war in Ukraine challenges the relevance of culture wars, Media Diversity Institute - Lizzie CernikIn the media - 28 February, 2022
A doctored headline claiming Julia Fox went 'goblin mode' was cited by outlets including Vogue, showing how easily fake news can spread, Insider - Lindsay Dodgson
A doctored headline claiming Julia Fox went 'goblin mode' was cited by outlets including Vogue, showing how easily fake news can spread, Insider - Lindsay Dodgson