Outside Ukraine, there is a raging war of information as Russian propaganda inspires pro-Russian protests in European countries.

Counteracting Russian disinformation is a priority for governments, and it's something the UK has been praised for arranging.

Its Ministry of Defense, or MOD, has been releasing regular intelligence updates used by independent military experts, journalists and analysts to decipher the truth about what's happening on the ground.

"Prior to the invasion, I had no idea whether the information is being released by the West is true or not. But it's turned out that it is true and that's given me a lot more confidence in the information that's now being released," said Sadakat Kadri, a London resident. 

This is a war being fought on two fronts, both on the ground in Ukraine, and outside of Ukraine in information. 

When it comes to counteracting Russian propaganda, the British government has been praised even by those who were once critical of the Ministry of Defense.

"I've been hugely critical of the MOD in the past about being useless at this sort of thing and hopeless at PR, but I think that that they're beginning to crack it," Stuart Crawford said.

Crawford is a military expert and former lieutenant colonel in the British army.

"Russia has tried to interfere in... various other elections around the world, so, I think it's very important that in many ways that the UK and... anybody in government try to keep the moral high ground," Crawford said.

In Russia, the BBC is broadcasting on shortwave radio after the government donated ₤5 million towards a special BBC World Service, as the Russian Federation pumps out falsehoods to its population. 

"They've become experts in disinformation across the internet," said Andrew Bridgen, a UK Parliament member. "They're well known for it. It's got a huge reach. That's how a lot of people receive their news and updates now, and it has to be countered. It's important that we play our part in doing that, getting the truth out to people. At the end of the day, the truth is the truth if no one believes it, and a lie is still a lie if everyone believes it."

Social media companies have scrambled to respond to Russian disinformation. On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reacted to Twitter restrictions on Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying all it was doing was telling the truth as countries and corporations rushed to respond to false claims and conspiracies.

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BELLEVUE, Wa. — Even as they're learning more about defeating COVID-19, doctors are up against another contender.

"When the vaccine came out and we felt everybody felt that the pandemic was ending or going to end soon, but now, you know, another year has dragged on and, and we really don't see the end in sight," said Dr. Radha Agrawal, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Overlake Hospital in Washington State.

The second contender being a pandemic of misinformation, or as the World Health Organization calls is an infodemic: “false or misleading information” that “causes confusion and risk-taking behaviors that can harm health” and “leads to mistrust in health authorities.”

Dr. Agrawal and Dr. Ed Leonard, an infectious disease physician at Overlake, say they are battling misinformation daily in interactions with COVID-19 patients, when they argue about their treatments or don't believe their diagnosis.

"Every day, we're learning something new about the pandemic, and sometimes, what we learn kind of makes what we said yesterday obsolete," said Dr. Leonard, "and so, that kind of leads to a confusion in the public of all the way that you just said yesterday, this now we're doing this."

"They have their mind made up, they've thought about it and they've decided, and they really don't value my input in terms of what they should do," said Dr. Agrawal.

From doctors to hospital leaders, this "infodemic" weighs heavily on the hearts and minds of those in healthcare.

"We see people coming in actually angry when they get diagnosed with COVID because they say COVID, isn't real, you're making it up, you're you're doing this only for profit," said CEO of Scripps Hospital, Chris Van Gorder.

"I've heard some people use the word that we've, in some ways, been villainized, I wouldn't say that. I would say that we've been forgotten," said Dr. Agrawal.

Even with the surgeon general declaring misinformation a significant public health challenge, the pushback from patients continues with no clear solutions of how to drown out the false information regarding COVID-19, leaving healthcare workers to deal with this problem at the patients' bedsides.

"It would be very easy as a provider with our morale and fatigue to kind of snap back and that is the last thing we need to do," said Dr. Leonard.

"You see them every day and you take care of them everyday and they become part of your family and it's hard to kind of hold a grudge in a sense," said Dr. Agrawal.

"I'm still going to take care of you and I'm still going to hope that you do get better," she said.

As year three of the pandemic has begun, these doctors want us to know that they will continue the fight for our lives, against all odds, just like they have done since day one.

"It's really seen patients hoping for that improvement, really hoping for those stories, where we made a difference. That is really what gets us to work every day," said Dr. Agrawal.

As COVID-19 misinformation continues to spread, experts say many people who are sharing it don’t realize the harm they could be doing to others.

It’s not always easy to differentiate between what’s true and what’s not, especially on social media.

It’s exactly what Sally Baalbaki-Yassine teaches her students: to pause before believing everything you see online, because there are algorithms in place specifically directing that information at you.

“My biggest thing is teaching them to always be skeptical of what they see on social media. You just can’t trust everything. To be able to go past this overconfidence bias that we all have," Baalbaki-Yassine said. “We’ve given them permission to do that, right? Where we have agreed to all of these things that we don’t necessarily read that say they can track everything we do on the social media platform and they are using algorithms from like Siri, for example, listening to what we say.”

Unlike disinformation, misinformation isn’t intended to mislead others, but it still can.

“So, if you’re already getting controversial information on other forms, that’s an easy way for a social media platform to be like, 'OK, this person is already absorbing this kind of information, let's give them more of this information,'" Baalbaki-Yassine said.

Anything that you see on social media has been purposely generated to get in front of your eyes.

“What you’re researching, even on Facebook, and who you’re following on Facebook will affect what kind of information you see in your news feed and then if you like certain things that your friends put on Facebook, then you’ll start getting that kind of information to show up as well," Baalbaki-Yassine said.

Experts say when you’re hungry for certainty and clarity, you can become more vulnerable to misinformation.

Jennifer Reich is a professor of sociology and explains it’s only natural for humans to want to feel the information they are getting is a guaranteed safety net. But that’s not the case with science, because there are always new discoveries.

“It’s important noting that when people lack official information that’s clear and trustworthy, they go to informal information. And it’s not exceptional. Most of us listen to our friends, our family, people we think reflect our values and lifestyle, the people we trust," Reich said. “And so that level of uncertainty that surrounds us feels scary and it feels like it’s not trustworthy, and the challenge is that just because we don’t know everything, it doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. You know, science is constantly refining and learning and we’ve seen this with vaccines in the past.”

Researchers with the World Health Organization say there were at least 800 global deaths due to misinformation related to COVID-19 within the first three months of 2020.

“So, there’s a constant process of learning and refining, but living through that process can be really anxiety-provoking and those are the opportunities where official information can feel uncertain and people look for other kinds of information," Reich said. “One of the traits with misinformation is it’s often stated with great certainty and that’s kind of a flag when there is no room to say from what we know now, as we’re learning, right? The kind of things we would expect a scientific process to unfold.”

Reich says that’s why so much misinformation has come out surrounding COVID-19 and the vaccine. As things are discovered, original information can be changed and more people become skeptical.

“And it’s not that it’s all true or untrue, but often it’s competing information. So, there might be something that was shown to be true, and then it’s evolved in a way that doesn’t work scientifically and we’ve learned new things, but that becomes hard to challenge, hard to kill in a lot of ways and it’s still shared," Reich said.

Baalbaki-Yassine and Reich say self-educating is one of the best favors you can do for yourself, but sharing, on the other hand, has larger implications than you may realize.

“So, educating them and helping them understand, giving them digital literacy of it’s not the end all be all, and you should be always skeptical, do your research and don’t share it," Baalbaki-Yassine said.

CHICAGO — Despite the natural urge to gravitate toward information that reinforces our own views, most agree that people genuinely want to be well-informed. But in recent years, campaigns by corporations, lobbyists and political operatives sowing division and suspicion have become a common problem.

Soon after the coronavirus pandemic began, small anti-stay-at-home protests erupted in dozens of states around the country.

“When things appear to be spontaneous and exciting, and especially, they're happening all over the country, that tends to gain a lot of media attention,” said Edward Walker, a UCLA sociology professor and author of Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy.

But many of these protests that appeared to be generated spontaneously were in fact manufactured by well-funded organizations. The practice is known as “astroturfing.”

“Astroturfing is an effort to mobilize the mass public in a way that distances that mobilization from the person who is sponsoring it or the organization that's sponsoring it,” explained Walker.

While fake grassroots campaigns have been utilized for decades, some experts trace the first documented case of astroturfing on social media to South Korea in 2012.

“A lot of astroturfing campaigns have been all over the Internet,” said JungHwan Yang, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose research focuses on data science and political communication. “It's not just on Twitter or Facebook. It's on Wikipedia. It's on a forum and everywhere.”

A study from Princeton University found that “there were at least 53 such influence efforts targeting 24 countries around the world from 2013 to 2018.”

“These campaigns really do try to cover their tracks,” said Walker. “They can often do so very effectively. Even the website domains that they use can be registered privately such that you can't tell who's behind it.”

Multiple cybersecurity firms investigated the “Reopen America” movement, finding that domains were being batch registered within seconds of each other.

They were subsequently traced back to state-based firearms coalitions, and ultimately, to a pro-gun Iowa family.

“Once a couple of accounts become really popular, they can gather thousands of followers, and then, they can use that platform to spread disinformation,” said Yang.

Experts say it’s difficult to identify astroturfing campaigns without deep cyber forensics.

“We're essentially pointing a fire hose of information at people all the time and expecting them to do a lot of heavy lifting and sifting,” said Stephanie Craft, head of the Department of Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “That seems to be a lot to ask.”

One way to do that, she says, is to watch for messaging that strikes a nerve or sparks an immediate visceral response.

“The fact that you're having that emotional reaction means it's time to stop and think about what that message is trying to do,” said Craft.

Experts say it’s important to vet sources as much as possible. Look at account history, language and messaging. Just because an issue appears to have an organic groundswell of support doesn’t mean the strings aren’t being by pulled by a concealed group.

This week is News Literacy Week, and the E.W. Scripps Company has teamed up with the News Literacy Foundation to help you battle misinformation.

With millions of Texas residents still without power amid frigid temperatures, conservative commentators have falsely claimed that wind turbines and solar energy were primarily to blame.

“We should never build another wind turbine in Texas,” read a Tuesday Facebook post from Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. “The experiment failed big time.”

“This is a perfect example of the need for reliable energy sources like natural gas & coal,” tweeted U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana, on Tuesday.

In reality, failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as frozen wind turbines and solar panels, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference Tuesday.

Still a variety of misleading claims spread on social media around renewable energy, with wind turbines and the Green New Deal getting much of the attention.

A viral photo of a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine was shared with claims it showed a “chemical” solution being applied to one of the massive wind generators in Texas. The only problem? The photo was taken in Sweden years ago, not in the U.S. in 2021. The helicopter sprayed hot water onto the wind turbine, not chemicals.

Other social media users, including Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, puzzlingly labeled the Green New Deal as the culprit. Boebert tweeted on Monday that the proposal was “proven unsustainable as renewables are clearly unreliable.”

But the Green New Deal is irrelevant, as no version of it exists in Texas or nationwide, said Mark Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

“It’s really natural gas and coal and nuclear that are providing the bulk of the electricity and that’s the bulk of the cause of the blackouts,” Jacobson told The Associated Press.

ERCOT said Tuesday that of the 45,000 total megawatts of power that were offline statewide, about 30,000 consisted of thermal sources — gas, coal and nuclear plants — and 16,000 came from renewable sources.

On top of that, while Texas has ramped up wind energy in recent years, the state still relies on wind power for only about 25% of its total electricity, according to ERCOT data.

“It’s not like we were relying on it to ride us through this event,” Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin, told the AP. “Nor would it have been able to save us even if it were operating at 100% capacity right now. We just don’t have enough of it.”

The agency confirmed that wellhead freeze-offs and other issues curtailing supply in natural gas systems were primarily to blame for new outages on Tuesday, after severe winter weather caused failures across multiple fuel types in recent days.

Renewable energy is a popular scapegoat for new problems as more frequent extreme weather events strain infrastructure, according to Emily Grubert, an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

“It’s easy to focus on the thing that you can see changing as the source of why an outcome is changing,” Grubert told the AP. “The reality is that managing our systems is becoming more difficult. And that’s something that is easy to blame on the reaction to it, but it’s not actually the root cause.”

As the delta variant continues to spread, experts say vaccine rates are not keeping up.

It has taken a month for the number of fully vaccinated Americans to get from 47% to almost 49.8% after vaccination rates rose dramatically in the first few months of its availability, and experts think much of that can be attributed to misinformation about the vaccine that has spread online.

The nonprofit called the Center for Countering Digital Hate did a recent study that found 65% of vaccine misinformation on social media sites came from 12 influencers they dubbed as the “disinformation dozen.”

After analyzing more than 815,000 Facebook posts, the group found that on Facebook alone the “disinformation dozen” was responsible for 73% of posts purporting conspiracy theories about the vaccine.

Together, the 12 people have a group following of more than 59 million people.

“They’ve got a lot of sway and a lot of pull because that is how those kinds of ecosystems are set up,” said Dr. Sam Jay, a communications studies professor at Metro State University in Denver. “Convenience is such a good word. It’s easier for us to find those shortcuts [to information]. It’s easier to find someone who does the thinking for us, and so, that’s why we’ve glommed onto these 12 folks because, again, they have credibility. Those are names that we recognize.”

Among the 12 people are a physician that embraces pseudoscience, a chiropractor, a wellness blogger, and a religious speaker, among others.

The CDC, and nearly every other scientific institution, has championed the vaccine as safe and effective. Even some governors of conservative states where vaccination rates are lower have changed their tune and started supporting it as well. But there is a stickiness to negative information that Jay says makes it more popular and viral than true information.

“We kind of need to rethink how we’re doing this because at that 30,000-foot level, the vaccine messaging just doesn’t work,” said Jay. “Evolutionarily, and as animals, that negative [information] sticks, it lasts. Those messages, they circulate faster, and I think it’s very hard for us to kind of break that cycle.”

Jay says there needs to be a change in dialogue, with more face-to-face conversation where emotion can be felt and a change in thinking that maybe the science is not lying.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate has a more hands-on approach, suggesting in its study that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube completely remove these 12 people from their platforms, saying they are influencing people with misinformation at a pivotal point in the pandemic.

FLORENCE, Ky. —

As another surge of COVID-19 pushes across the region, nurses are finding most of the latest patients to be very sick, unvaccinated and many have a misconception in common.

“They still don’t believe that it’s real,” said St. Elizabeth nursing supervisor Lee Ann Ernst. “People will say, ‘I didn’t think this was going to hit me. I didn’t think I was going to get it.’”

Ernst has been working with COVID-19 patients since the beginning of the pandemic.

“In the past 10 days, two weeks, our numbers have just skyrocketed again,” she said.

The delta variant is blamed for the dramatic increase.

The Northern Kentucky Health Department reports 117 new cases and 10 deaths overnight between Monday and Tuesday.

The COVID-19 map of Northern Kentucky shows that nearly half of the region is now considered a red zone which indicates there have been 25 cases reported per 100,000 people.

“People, I guess, think they are immune from it even when they aren’t vaccinated,” said St. Elizabeth nurse Madison Otte.

Some people who did not believe the virus was real, changed their minds after they were hospitalized with it.

“It’s kind of a ‘come to Jesus,’ regretful, this is happening,” Otte said.

CINCINNATI —

A local professor who studies misinformation about vaccines on social media is adding new insights into the concerns by President Biden that the myths are “costing lives.”

“There are groups of individuals that are doing the work to try to create misinformation, propaganda for various reasons, even monetary reasons,” said Northern Kentucky University's Dr. Traian Marius Truta.

Truta is a professor of computer science, and since 2018, has studied vaccine misinformation spread by social media. Truta said determining exactly how much of an impact misinformation has is hard to quantify.

“Social media plays a huge role in spreading misinformation however, social media also plays an important role in eliminating misinformation,” Truta said.

One myth that gained traction on social media was that the vaccine had a tracking device, another myth claimed that the vaccine made people magnetic. Truta said the most ridiculous claims are believed by fewer people.

“There are some, but very few. I doubt there are very many that are not taking their vaccine because of those claims,” Truta said.

Social media is only one part of the complex misinformation issue. Even if it is hard to measure, the impact is apparent to many doctors.

“The medical community and the scientific communities are trying to get good scientific information out there but it’s a constant uphill battle when things are coming from all different sources that are untrue,” said TriHealth medical director for infectious diseases Dr. Stephen Blatt.

Overdramatizing actual side effects is another form of misinformation and is sometimes very effective. Blatt said false claims that sound like they could be real are also hard to stop.

“One of the ones that’s come up recently is that the COVID vaccine interferes with fertility in men in women. That’s not true. The vaccines are very safe, even in pregnant women and they don’t cause infertility and that’s important to know,” Blatt said.

President Biden and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy are calling on social media platforms to do more to reign in misinformation about vaccines.

“We know that health misinformation harms people’s health. It costs them their lives,” Murthy said.

The White House picked a serious fight with Facebook Friday. The Biden administration wants social media giants to take down posts that officials flag as COVID-19 misinformation.

President Biden leveled an incredibly serious charge. 

A reporter asked him: "What's your message to platforms like Facebook?" 

President Biden said: "They're killing people. I mean, really, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people." 

Facebook was quick to fire back, saying, "We will not be distracted by accusations which aren't supported by the facts." 

A spokesperson added, "More than 3.3 million Americans have also used our vaccine finder tool to find out where and how to get a vaccine. The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period." 

Biden's comments come one day after his Surgeon General issued a warning about health misinformation and directly called out Facebook.

HINSDALE, IL — Remote learning has transformed how schools handle sex education.

During the pandemic, students spent more time online, further isolated from social, emotional, and mental health. But experts say the internet should not be the source of sexual education for kids, and the current health crisis has complicated the issue.

When it comes to sex education, like most parents, Laura Burns doesn’t want her 5^th grader clicking around on the internet.

“Unfortunately, when it comes to sex ed and things that they might be really curious about, there's way more misinformation than good and true information, in my opinion,” said Burns.

Her 11-year-old daughter, Katie, is now at an age when children start to become curious.

“If I feel uncomfortable, I might think about it, but I mostly still go to my mom,” said Katie Burns said.

“I also realize that she's getting to the point where it may become uncomfortable to ask me something,” said Laura Burns.

According to one study conducted at the outset of the COVID outbreak, half of 11 to 13-year-olds reported having seen pornography in some way. Nearly two-thirds of them said they had done so to learn about sex generally.

“The average age of first exposure to some sort of online pornography is 9,” said Katie Gallagher, director of education for Candor Health Education.

Originally a health museum for more than half a century, the nonprofit Candor Health Education has taught health, sex education, and drug prevention to students from 4^th to 8^th grade.

Gallagher points out with social isolation and increased time spent online, the pandemic has only compounded the issue.

“Kids are going to see this now. We have to make sure that we they know what to do when they do, and they have the right places to go and the right information,” said Gallagher.

Over the last few years, the nonprofit's outreach programming has had to shift, accelerated by remote schooling.

“We saw that it was not going to be a possibility this year, and we spent all of last summer really reworking our programs so that we could offer various virtual delivery models,” said Gallagher.

Katie Burns recently went through the new learning system with her mom at her side.

“I thought it was going to make it a bit uncomfortable and impersonal,” said Laura Burns. “And I actually found it to be the exact opposite.”

“They went deeper, and I understood things differently and more clearly,” said daughter Katie.

And while experts say sexual education should not come from the internet, the future of its delivery will likely end up becoming more virtual and online.