Protecting Your Organization From Disinformation Campaigns

Your organization has spent years building its reputation. Yet, a single disinformation campaign can destroy that hard work within hours. These coordinated attacks spread false narratives that go viral on social media, directly leading to financial losses, customer boycotts, and severe reputational damage.

In this blog post, we'll explore what disinformation campaigns are, how they work, what constitutes a crisis, and the practical steps you can take to protect your organization before, during, and after an attack.

What Is A Disinformation Campaign?

A disinformation campaign is a planned, coordinated effort to spread false information with the intent to manipulate public opinion or damage a targeted entity. Unlike misinformation, which can be accidental, disinformation is deliberately created to deceive.

The rise of AI has dramatically increased both the volume and sophistication of these campaigns. AI tools now enable bad actors to generate thousands of convincing fake news pieces, create deepfakes, and target specific audiences with tailored misinformation—all at a scale humans simply cannot match.

While AI offers many benefits for organizations—like automating tasks and detecting manipulated media—its misuse in disinformation campaigns poses serious threats. These campaigns spread rapidly across social media platforms, causing financial damage, eroding consumer trust, and triggering significant backlash.

The good news is, organizations recognize this growing threat. According to Gartner, by 2028, 50% of enterprises will adopt products specifically to address disinformation security use cases, up from less than 5% in 2024.

How Do Disinformation Campaigns Work?

Disinformation campaigns follow a systematic approach to maximize their impact and reach. They begin with specific goals and target vulnerable demographics, especially groups with emotional triggers or existing grievances.

Operatives craft compelling false narratives, often mixing partial truths with lies to increase credibility. They use inflammatory language and emotional hooks, sometimes including personal attacks or graphic imagery to manipulate audiences.

Once attackers finish their content, it is initially planted on smaller, less scrutinized media outlets. Multiple actors then work together to create an illusion of organic discussion while following a centralized strategy. They use bots, fake accounts, and coordinated networks to artificially boost engagement and visibility.

After that stage is done, campaigns deploy content across various platforms—social media, websites, messaging apps—to reach different audiences and create an illusion of consensus. They leverage recommendation algorithms by creating engaging content that platforms naturally promote to larger audiences.

As the story moves from smaller to larger platforms, it gains perceived credibility with each step. The ultimate goal is having mainstream media unwittingly spread the false narrative, creating momentum where the story appears increasingly newsworthy.

That said, an example of a disinformation campaign was The Doppelgänger campaign that was identified around 2022. This Russian disinformation operation created fake versions of legitimate news websites like The Washington Post to publish pro-Kremlin propaganda and anti-Ukraine narratives. The campaign targeted Western audiences through social media, paid ads, and fake accounts to erode trust in mainstream media and weaken support for Ukraine.

What Is Considered A Crisis?

A disinformation campaign becomes a crisis when the deliberate spread of false information threatens to damage your organization's reputation, credibility, or operations. These situations often have significant social, political, or economic consequences.

Crisis-level disinformation campaigns typically involve coordinated networks of fake accounts, bots, influencers, or media outlets working together. They often strike during vulnerable periods like product launches, public scandals, or company transitions.

The coronavirus conspiracy theory offers a clear example. False claims that COVID-19 was engineered by world elites to reduce population growth gained traction through conspiracy-driven social media posts. These posts blamed figures like Bill Gates and organizations like WHO for creating the virus as part of a depopulation agenda.

Despite being repeatedly debunked by health experts and fact-checkers, these theories continued to spread due to algorithm-driven content amplification and online echo chambers.

How You Can Protect Your Organization From Disinformation Campaigns

There are three critical phases to protecting your organization from disinformation campaigns: before a crisis happens, while a crisis unfolds, and after the crisis ends. Each phase requires specific strategies to ensure your organization remains resilient against these targeted attacks.

Phase #1: Protecting Your Organization Before A Crisis Happens

Before a crisis hits, you need to build your defenses. Proactively monitor online platforms for potential sources of misinformation and establish relationships with media outlets to ensure accurate reporting when you need it most.

Proactive Monitoring

Proactive monitoring helps identify potential problems early, allowing for timely responses that minimize negative impacts. If you monitor social media and other online spaces, you’ll be able to spot negative sentiment or complaints before they escalate into full-blown crises. Also, this approach reduces downtime, saves costs, and maintains stakeholder trust.

Identify Potential Sources

Identifying potential misinformation sources before a crisis strikes improves your readiness and reduces potential harm. Establish systems to monitor online platforms and social media for conversations about your organization. Additionally, track trends and discussions surrounding your industry to anticipate potential attacks.

Build Relationships

Building relationships with media outlets ensures accurate and timely communication during a crisis. Develop positive relationships with key journalists and create a media contact list for accessible communication during an incident. When a crisis hits, these established connections will prove invaluable.

Rapid Response Team (RRT)

A Rapid Response Team enables quick detection and decision-making when facing disinformation attacks. Form your RRT with clear roles and communication protocols before any crisis occurs. This preparation ensures everyone knows their responsibilities when quick action is required.

Form A Dedicated Team

This is related to your RTT team but it’s not quite the same. It’s a dedicated team that proactively monitors online platforms, social media, and media outlets to identify emerging trends before they become problems. This team ensures accurate information counters false or misleading claims.

Include representatives from public relations/communications, legal, and IT/security departments. Each brings unique expertise needed to address different aspects of disinformation campaigns.

Define Roles And Responsibilities

Clearly defined roles and responsibilities ensure effective and timely responses during crises. They prevent ambiguity and ensure every team member understands their specific tasks, duties, and reporting lines.

When roles are clear, team members can focus on their assigned tasks under pressure. This clarity strengthens your organization's ability to navigate difficult situations and recover faster.

Develop A Communication Plan

A clear communication plan acts as a blueprint that enables immediate response to unexpected situations. It should include both immediate communication steps and future prevention strategies. For getting the best results, assign a spokesperson and outline specific communication protocols for all team members.

Craft Clear Messaging

Clear messaging ensures accurate information dissemination, maintains trust, and prevents confusion. Prepare pre-approved messaging templates to address potential misinformation campaigns. Also, make sure your messages are concise and based on factual evidence. Having these templates ready saves critical time you’ll need to prepare for the following stages.

Identify Communication Channels

Identifying effective communication channels enables swift, accurate information sharing. Consider establishing a dedicated webpage or social media thread for updates regarding misinformation campaigns.

Phase #2: Protecting Your Organization During A Crisis

When a crisis hits, let your Rapid Response Team take charge. They'll assess the situation, issue timely public statements addressing the misinformation, and engage with the media to set the record straight.

Rapid Detection And Assessment

Identify the source of disinformation and determine its severity, context, and potential impact. Rapid assessment helps you understand the scale of the threat and develop an appropriate response strategy. The sooner you spot the problem, the better your chances of containing it.

Monitor Activity

Monitoring online activity helps identify the specific misinformation being spread and its potential reach. This surveillance reveals the tactics being used and helps you develop effective counter-strategies. Regular monitoring also helps you track how the disinformation campaign evolves over time, allowing you to adapt your response accordingly.

Assess Impact

Impact assessment reveals how disinformation affects public perception, employee morale, and customer behavior. It helps quantify potential operational, financial, or reputational damage.

This analysis guides the development of effective crisis response strategies and builds organizational resilience against future attacks.

Activate Your RRT

Activate your Rapid Response Team so they’re aware a crisis is happening and they need to take immediate, coordinated action.

Convene The Team

Bring your team together to align on goals, messaging, and decision-making. It’ll facilitate real-time updates and adaptive problem-solving. Then, initiate a coordinated response based on your pre-defined plan.

Communication And Transparency

Effective communication minimizes misinformation during a crisis and transparency reduces speculation and public backlash. Open communication also shows accountability and reinforces organizational credibility. Ultimately, it helps you manage the situation and control the narrative, leading to more positive outcomes.

Issue Public Statements

Public statements keep people informed and reduce panic, confusion, or speculation, and they reinforce trust in your organization when executed properly.

Issue a timely statement acknowledging the misinformation and providing factual information. Use your pre-approved messaging templates to ensure consistency and clarity, and leverage social media platforms to amplify your message quickly.

Engage With The Media

Proactively engage with media outlets to ensure accurate coverage and reduce the risk of sensationalized reporting. It’ll also help you reach a broader audience, including those not directly following your organization.

Ideally you should build relationships with media outlets before crises happen, however, it’s not always possible. If this is the case for your organization, build media relationships during a crisis to support future reputation management efforts and give you more control over how your response is portrayed.

Identify And Address Sources (If Possible)

Identify the source of disinformation to stop its spread at the origin and prevent recurrence. Source identification also supports legal or platform-based action against the perpetrators and enables more targeted messaging to correct falsehoods, especially on social media.

Gather Evidence

Evidence collection provides documentation for legal, regulatory, or platform enforcement actions. This information will demonstrate the impact and intent behind the campaign.

Work with your IT/security team to identify the source of misinformation and preserve evidence for potential legal action. This documentation also supports future prevention strategies and internal learning.

Report Violations

Report violations to relevant platforms to remove harmful content quickly before it spreads further. This is one of the best things you can do because when you report misinformation campaigns to social media platforms and request content removal, you’ll help discourage future violations by holding offenders responsible.

Fact-Checking and Correction

Fact-check information internally to reinforce your organization's credibility and commitment to truth. This process helps educate audiences and rebuild trust damaged by disinformation.

Partner With Fact-Checkers

Partnering with fact-checkers adds third-party credibility to your efforts. Collaborate with reputable fact-checking organizations to debunk misinformation and provide facts. These partnerships are highly effective for building long-term resilience against disinformation tactics.

Issue Corrections

Issuing corrections shows transparency and willingness to take responsibility. They build trust with audiences, media, and stakeholders. They also prevent the spread of outdated or inaccurate information.

Phase #3: Protecting Your Organization Once A Crisis Ends

After the crisis ends, perform a post-mortem analysis with your RRT to identify areas for improvement and strengthen your defenses against future attacks.

RRT Post-Mortem

A thorough post-mortem reveals how the disinformation campaign started and spread across social media platforms. It identifies weaknesses in your monitoring, response protocols, and communication channels.

This analysis also highlights which actions helped contain the crisis and which made it worse. These insights are crucial for improving your future response capabilities.

Debrief Leadership

Debriefing ensures leadership and key teams understand what happened and why. Most importantly, it provides an opportunity to review decisions and actions taken during the crisis. Sharing valuable insights across departments also improves coordination for future incidents.

Evaluate Your Response

Response evaluation helps you analyze your communication strategy, public statements, and media engagement during the crisis. It measures how fast, clear, and coordinated your response was. This assessment identifies missed opportunities or missteps and helps justify the resources used during your crisis response.

Identify Lessons Learned

Identifying lessons learned clarifies actionable takeaways for future disinformation threats. It builds organizational resilience by turning mistakes into improvements.

Use these insights to revise communication protocols, refine RRT roles, or improve training on misinformation tactics. This continuous improvement is key to keep your organization adaptive to new threats.

Strengthen Communication Strategy

A strong communication strategy builds trust with stakeholders through clear, consistent information during crises and it improves coordination across teams.

Additionally, improved communication strategies perform better on fast-moving platforms like social media, where disinformation often spreads in a matter of minutes.

Refine Messaging

Refining your messaging ensures communication is clear, accurate, and easy to understand. It prevents confusion or backlash during future incidents.

Review and update your pre-approved messaging templates based on the specific misinformation encountered. Make sure your messages are concise and address potential future attacks.

Enhance Your Monitoring

Improved monitoring detects lingering threats or coordinated follow-up attacks that may continue post-crisis. Evaluate your system for monitoring online activity and consider incorporating new tools or expanding your monitoring scope. The right tools support proactive defense against disinformation that spreads quickly online.

For example, social media security tools like Spikerz offer excellent security features that help combat disinformation:

• It uses AI to detect and differentiate between bots and human users, providing lists for you to block or report.
• It scans for various threats including fake accounts, impersonation, spam, and suspicious content driving false narratives.
• It provides real-time alerts when threats are detected, enabling prompt action.
• And much more.

Are You Already Using A Social Media Security Tool To Protect Your Business?

Your accounts are too valuable to leave unprotected. Don't wait until after a disinformation campaign to take security seriously. Protect your brand's digital presence now with Spikerz—because prevention costs far less than recovery.

Reputation Management

Effective reputation management rebuilds your organization's reputation across media and social media platforms, helping you recover from the damage caused by disinformation.

Monitor Online Sentiment

Monitoring audience sentiment detects lingering negative perceptions before they escalate again. Continue monitoring online platforms and social media after the crisis subsides. Track public sentiment and address any concerns from stakeholders promptly.

Proactive Communications

Proactive communication shows leadership and ongoing responsibility after the crisis. It encourages public engagement and reduces speculation and distrust.

Maintain communication with key stakeholders, including employees, customers, and partners. Share updates on your efforts to address misinformation and rebuild trust. Consider hosting Q&A sessions or issuing follow-up statements to address lingering concerns.

Conclusion

Disinformation campaigns are a serious threat to organizations of all sizes. These coordinated attacks spread false narratives that can devastate your reputation and bottom line in hours. The good news is that with proper preparation, you can protect your organization.

Establish a Rapid Response Team, monitor for early warning signs, and develop clear communication protocols before a crisis hits to build resilience against these attacks. When disinformation strikes, swift assessment, transparent communication, and fact-based responses help minimize damage. After the crisis, thorough analysis and refinement of your strategies ensure you emerge stronger and better prepared for future threats.