FAQs

The DISARM Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization, incorporated in the US and also working across Europe. Its purpose is to develop a small team to maintain and enhance the DISARM Framework on behalf of its users.

The purpose of the DISARM Framework is to provide a ‘common language’ for the many people around the world working to mitigate the harms caused by disinformation, by enabling them to track, describe, and share their analyses using the common language.

The DISARM Framework has been developed largely by volunteers, since it first began its life as the AMITT Framework¹ in 2019. Our first financial support came from the Alfred Landecker Foundation in Europe in 2022. We continue to operate with very limited resources, whilst looking for further financial support to ensure our sustainability. We receive no financial support from governments.

DISARM is an open framework – ie. publicly available, for anyone to use under a Creative Commons license. Users of DISARM are likely to include governments, corporations, civil society and media organizations, and information-sharing and analysis centers and organizations (ISACs and ISAOs²). The primary objective is to ensure that DISARM is accessible to a wide array of users engaged in combating threats to the public information environment, fostering trustworthiness in information sources, and promoting collaborative initiatives on a global level.

Current users of the DISARM Framework include a number of disinformation analyst organizations, the European Commission and some governments – eg. France – to ‘tag’ written reports to identify DISARM tactics and techniques and thereby be able to make better overall sense of individual and collective reports. DISARM’s Red framework is used for this (making sense of adversarial activity). DISARM’s Blue framework (describing countermeasures for defenders) is less mature than Red, and we plan to enhance this aspect in 2024. The US and EU have stated an intent to share information including through the use of DISARM. However, work is still in early stages to develop the wider standardization needed to bring this to life.

We use the term ‘disinformation’ as a short umbrella title for ‘influence operations’. Other terms include ‘information manipulation and interference’ – and very often ‘foreign information manipulation and interference’ (FIMI). The definition also very much encompasses harms that result. All definitions are still being debated across the global community, as this arena – in the social media age – is still relatively new and emerging.

The difference is intent. In addition to its popular use as an umbrella term, as described above, many use the term disinformation more specifically, as information that is false, misleading, incomplete, or out of context, and which is deliberately created, altered, manipulated, disseminated, or presented with the intent to deceive. Misinformation, by contrast, is information that is false, misleading, incomplete, or out of context, but which is not created, disseminated, or presented with an intent to deceive. Misinformation may originate as disinformation, or it may be created by error or mistake. It may then be spread unwittingly or in good faith by individuals who have no intent to deceive³.

Influence operations combine various and multiple information influence activities. Information influence activities are activities often conducted by a foreign power to influence the perceptions, behavior, and decisions of target groups to the benefit of the foreign power. Information influence activities can be conducted as a single activity or as part of a larger information influence operation combining various and multiple activities⁴.

FIMI describes a mostly non-illegal pattern of behavior that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures, and political processes. Such activity is manipulative in character, conducted in an intentional and coordinated manner. Actors of such activity can be state or non-state actors, including their proxies inside and outside of their own territory⁵.

DISARM does not do content moderation – ie. it does not determine which content is disinformation. Neither is its purpose to focus on content. Instead, the DISARM Framework helps codify the ‘behaviors’ – the tactics and techniques – of those who plan and execute influence operations. It is for the users of DISARM – whether NGOs, journalists, governments or others – to say what they believe is ‘true’ or not. Equally, information does not have to be ‘untrue’ to be part of an influence campaign. DISARM users are, therefore, often not primarily concerned with separating fact from fiction. Instead, they might seek to identify – for example – manipulation of or covert interference in another country's information environment by a foreign actor, along with seeking to show how the resulting harm can be addressed.

Being one of our beta testers gives you the opportunity to have first sight of changes to the new framework, and influence the direction we take over the next two years. Being a beta tester is voluntary and you will not be required to give feedback as a condition of being granted access to the beta version. We would however welcome any and all feedback from testers, either via online interviews or by completing a short online survey. 

During 2025, we will be looking for beta testers to help us select and prioritse our development efforts. If you are interested in becoming a beta tester, or have any questions about the future of the red framework please contact: info@disarm.foundation

Each tactic and technique in the red framework has a unique alpha-numeric code. As we move tactics and techniques around, the codes assigned to individual tactics and techniques will remain unchanged. We expect that most of the current tactics and techniques will remain in the framework, so historic tags should not be impacted.

We hope to minimise disruption as far as possible. This year, we have been making changes to the live framework; to add and clarify tactics and techniques, as requested by users. We aim to complete this phase of work by the end of 2024. In January 2025, we will create a ‘fork’ of the live framework, so that we can test changes to a private version of the framework, without disrupting the live version. 

During 2025, we will start to invite stakeholders to become beta testers of the new framework, and we will collect feedback from them before taking any decisions on the extent to which the new version is merged with or replaces the old version, and how we manage the roll out of the new version.