The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) provides pioneering technology, research, and analysis to identify and forecast cyber-social threats targeting individuals, organizations, and communities. The NCRI is committed to empowering partners to become proactive in protecting themselves against false narratives that create rifts of distrust that impact institutions, capital markets, public health, and safety.
NCRI Featured in News in the
U.S. and Around the World
Relied upon for subject matter expertise, NCRI helps inform public understanding of emerging threats in the cyber social domain.
Resource to the World’s
Leading Universities
The world’s leading colleges and universities benefit from access to NCRI’s proprietary ingest engine to support data-driven social media research initiatives.
Proprietary Platform
NCRI’s proprietary platform intelligently processes and classifies open-source social media data and:
- Generates more than half a billion data queries and more than 1.3 million unique visitors per month
- Is the most comprehensive platform available today for social media pattern recognition and research
- Is used by over 370 universities around the world and is cited in more than one thousand peer-reviewed research articles.
Intelligent People
Our expert team of data scientists, research analysts, social scientists, and global intelligence professionals, skillfully analyze and interpret the data collected to forecast emerging threats and make strategic recommendations for action.
Trusted by America’s
Leading Brands
Companies and organizations around the world trust the NCRI to help them be proactive in protecting their brand equity.
NCRI in the News
Spreading Misinformation About the COVID Vaccines
Joel Finkelstein, NCRI founder appeared on 60 minutes to discuss that QAnon had “rebranded” since President Trump left office and that followers are now doubling down on misinformation about COVID vaccines and masks.
Russian disinformation campaigns are trying to sow distrust of COVID vaccines, study finds

Russian propagandists and Internet trolls are increasingly targeting companies with disinformation campaigns that are intended to damage their corporate reputations and stir public animosity.
That’s according to new research published Friday by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a non-profit that studies the spread of misinformation and deception on social media like Facebook and Twitter. The report’s findings are important because they highlight “a trend that disinformation is now being used as a means of economic warfare,” said NCRI lead intelligence analyst Alex Goldenberg.
Iran Steps up Efforts to Sow Discord Inside the U.S.

Iranian state actors are intensifying their disinformation campaign on social media to spread discord and anti-Semitic tropes inside the U.S., two U.S. intelligence officials say.
Featured NCRI Reports
-
2/28/23 – Analysis of the “National Day of Hate” and the Dangers of Amplifying Low-Signal Extremis Content
The recent “National Day of Hate” event planned by an obscure Iowa-based white nationalist group received little attention (roughly 20 likes) within its own subcultural ecosystem on Telegram, yet received widespread amplification from mainstream media and organizations such as the ADL. There is little publicly available evidence to suggest larger white nationalist groups engaged with posts associated with the planned event or were planning to participate.
-
2/8/23 – #Twittertakeover: How the Musk Acquisition Became a Launchpad for Gen-Z Neo-Nazis, Ye, and Widespread Antisemitism
Extremist elements have viewed Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter as an opportunity to rejoin Twitter en masse, responding to a number of signals including Twitter’s recent decision to reinstate the accounts of white supremacists.
Introducing Network Contagion Labs
NC Labs partners with major universities to create the nation’s foremost training/internship program for the paradigm of cyber-social threat identification and forecasting.
NC Labs has established a virtual, multidisciplinary, open source intelligence laboratory that trains the next generation to:
- Investigate and identify emerging threats in the social cyber domain in the new field of open source intelligence.
- Deploy data-driven computational methods to forecast emerging threats and procure deeper online threat intelligence.
NC Labs has a dedicated team to fully design, curate and administer coursework as a certified and recognized leader around the world in OSINT training.
