Dewey Defend Detects, Combats and Repairs Damage from Online Disinformation
(Washington, DC) – The Dewey Square Group is offering a cutting-edge tool to combat false or misleading information generated by bots on social media platforms. The new product, Dewey Defend allows political campaigns, issue advocacy campaigns, and corporate brands to discover, report, and counter social media disinformation on an enterprise level.
The new tool detects false robotic social media accounts and sends early alerts when disinformation campaigns surface on any major social media platform, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Gab. Bots – or scripted, robotic social media accounts – spread misinformation, artificially skew search engine results, and often initiate large-scale messaging attacks against brands, individuals, and candidates. After their prevalence became apparent during the 2016 election, bots have increasingly become a security concern for companies, non-profit organizations and governments, and social media platforms are scrambling to provide their users with increased protection and transparency.
Developed over the last 18 months, Dewey Defend was built to offer real time social view into a world that traditional general purpose social media listening tools cannot see. It lists top fraudulent accounts distorting conversations about client’s brands, causes and candidates, and gives the earliest possible warnings for the messages that those accounts are amplifying, and ways to counter misinformation. After several early real-world tests, DSG is now unveiling Dewey Defend for the 2020 elections season.
“Organized disinformation social media campaigns are all too common across all the major platforms,” said Tim Chambers, Principal at Dewey Square Group. “These attacks are inexpensive to create, lightning fast to take effect, and frighteningly effective at influencing elections, changing policy discussions, or diminishing a brand’s reputation.”
Dewey Defend has already been used by clients in Alabama Sen. Doug Jones’s special election campaign, Virginia’s 2017 campaign for Governor, Kentucky’s 2019 primary for Governor, and Wisconsin’s 2019 Supreme Court election. In addition, organizations such as Black Lives Matters Global Network have used Dewey Defend to help them counter fraudulent accounts from multiple sources trying to attack and distort messages around their movement. In each case, it offered critical real-time support to the digital, grassroots and communications teams for each organization.
“As we saw across multiple political campaigns, social media listening needs to be able to detect and warn of bot posts as soon as they appear,” said Kailee Scales, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Black Lives Matter Global Network. “Dewey Defend provides us with the tools we need to combat this dangerous and misleading content.”
Dewey Defend provides digital countermeasures to act against false accounts aimed at artificially skewing discussions online. The technology is a powerful tool for identifying false information and protecting the integrity of public discourse. In many cases, these automated accounts violate platforms’ terms of service, and Dewey Defend alerts social media companies when accounts display the characteristics of a bot.
“Public discourse in the digital space cannot defend itself,” said Charlie Baker, President and Co-Founder of Dewey Square Group. “We now have campaign-tested, robust tools ready to address a constantly evolving landscape of social media.”
ABOUT DEWEY SQUARE GROUP
We help you win public support.
Dewey Square Group was founded in 1992. We help businesses, non profits, campaigns, and causes achieve their public affairs goals – whether they be favorable legislative or policy outcomes, successful advocacy efforts, community-based consumer marketing, or high-profile awareness campaigns.
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DSG helps clients succeed by applying campaign-style strategies that help win the support of opinion leaders and the public. Our team is led by some of the nation’s leading strategists and tacticians — professionals with impressive track records of success in the political and corporate arenas before joining DSG.
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Dewey Square Group first made its mark on the public affairs sector as a pioneer of highly effective grassroots strategies and tactics. In the last decade, we’ve emerged as a leader in the application of digital techniques, and built a unique and specialized practice around multicultural outreach. We also offer a complete suite of integrated public affairs capabilities including public relations, strategic and crisis communications, and community-based consumer marketing.
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For nearly 25 years, we’ve been building a nationwide presence that includes deep local relationships and execution capability in all 50 states, enabling us to adapt to fast-moving environments, scale quickly and deliver results.
Dewey Square Group is a Hill+Knowlton Strategies company.