Most of our projects are confidential and we are unable to disclose them. But we have also done a number of projects over the past four years that have gained broader attention and have been published in various media. They give a good indication of our capabilities and the possibilities of the research we can perform.
For the S&D group of the European Parliament we investigated foreign influence campaigns around the EU Elections in 2024. Our report is titled “The Influence Game: How Disinformation Networks Target EU Elections”. The report is not public but the Guardian published a very good article about it.
For the Council of Europe we worked on the report “Hate Speech in Times of Crisis”.
Research on the activity of the IRA troll army after the attacks on Zaventem airport in Brussels in 2016 for Belgian political magazine Knack.
Several of our investigations / publications appear in the report “Politics and Social Media manipulation” issued by the ministry of Internal Affairs of the Netherlands about disinformation and and so-called fake news.
Dutch newspaper Telegraaf had a front page article with a claim that Dutch mayor Broertjes (city of Hilversum) was behind an anonymous troll account, spreading very negative info and comments about politicians.
Our research showed that the Telegraaf was wrong and the mayor was not involved with this Twitter-account. We found the actual person behind the troll account, who subsequently admitted and called the mayor to apologize. The research solved a police case since the mayor claimed he had been hacked and had gone to the police after Telegraaf published their article.
For broadcasting network HUMAN Robert worked on an episode of the Dutch tv show THINKTANK (Dutch: Denktank). In the episode he discusses fake news including Russian influence on the American elections and the Internet research agency troll factory in St Petersburg.
We researched a famous Dutch singer called Dotan. Some stories from him seemed fake. Especially one story about a meet & Greet with a young boy with terminal Leukemia and his brother seemed impossible. Analysis of his brother’s account showed it was a fake profile. Extensive mapping of this account and its interactions led to a large troll network (140-200 accounts). The troll army was present on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and was used by the artist to spread fake news, attack journalists etc. Facebook posts, Twitter accounts within the network were studied over a 10 year period.