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11. Russian Disinformation in Africa: No Door on this Barn

Author:
Dan Whitman
Publication Date:
08-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
Recent gains by Russian disinformation in Africa make up one of the quickest propaganda victories in history. Wagner Group-Kremlin narratives work to Russia’s material advantage, and to Africa’s strong disadvantage. Understandably, Western governments are skittish toward employing underhanded tactics to counter Russian lies. An alternative to inaction could be to marry Western government resources with the work of non-governmental organizations in Africa and elsewhere. As is sometimes said about climate change, it may already be “too late” to mount efforts to remedy the situation. But that is hardly a reason for doing nothing.
Topic:
Climate Change, Propaganda, Disinformation, and Wagner Group
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, and Eurasia

12. Democratic defence: How Italy can lead the fight against Russian disinformation

Author:
Gabriele Carrer, Teresa Coratella, and Silvia Samorè
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)
Abstract:
New research for ECFR suggests pro-Russia and pro-China narratives are present in online and traditional forms of discourse in Italy. It finds that forms of anomalous activity spiked just ahead of the country’s 2022 general election. Despite the shock to Italian foreign policy caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine, economic ties between the countries remain. Moreover, the political environment in Italy remains conducive to Russian influence, with the leaders of four of the five largest parties in parliament prone to echoing talking points favourable to Moscow or advocating for “peace” while suggesting the withdrawal of military support to Ukraine. Italy has been slow to put in place the structures needed to combat foreign influence. The new governing coalition appeared to place little value on tackling the problem, but it has now started to build on the more considerable progress made under former prime minister Mario Draghi. Italy should seize opportunities to strengthen the battle against disinformation, such as: encouraging the next European Commission to incorporate this task into its mandate; and placing the topic in Rome’s forthcoming G7 presidency programme.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Democracy, Disinformation, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Ukraine, and Italy

13. Culture clash: Russia, Ukraine, and the fight for the European public

Author:
Pawel Zerka
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)
Abstract:
Russia’s war on Ukraine is a test of Europe’s values of openness, freedom, solidarity, and individual responsibility. According to ECFR’s research, European sentiment is strong in the EU today; the public holds positive attitudes towards the EU and Europe; and most governments are dedicated to European cooperation. European citizens and governments have shown unprecedented support for Ukraine, but European leaders face various dilemmas about how to handle Russian culture, disinformation, and people in the context of the war – and their responses to these challenges have consequences for European sentiment. Their approach can either reassert European values, helping to sustain European unity and support for Ukraine. Or it can undermine these values, presenting the EU as weak and hypocritical, and eroding Europeans’ confidence in the EU and solidarity with Ukraine. Rather than follow their protective instincts, European governments should display confidence in liberalism and in the European civil society which, over the past year, has demonstrated its resilience.
Topic:
Culture, Public Opinion, Disinformation, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

14. Dimensión digital de la guerra de Rusia contra Ucrania: perspectivas endógenas en situaciones de emergencia

Author:
Jacinto Gómez-López, Jesús Miguel Flores-Vivar, and Ángel Gómez de Agreda
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista UNISCI/UNISCI Journal
Institution:
Unidad de investigación sobre seguridad y cooperación (UNISCI)
Abstract:
Los conflictos armados provocan disrupciones en las redes de comunicaciones y su empleo malicioso por parte del enemigo. Si bien las causas que lo originan son distintas, las consecuencias son, a menudo, similares a las que se producen en emergencias de la sociedad civil. El establecimiento de protocolos y mecanismos que fomenten la resiliencia de las redes y aplicaciones tecnológicas existentes y que prevean el uso de otras alternativas es una parte fundamental en el correcto funcionamiento de los servicios de emergencia. El artículo presenta algunas reflexiones y resultados preliminares para la mejora de estos servicios, basadas en las enseñanzas extraídas del conflicto en Ucrania-Rusia. Se recogen acciones para la mejora de las actuaciones en las redes sociales y en aquellos servicios que estas habilitan.
Topic:
Communications, Propaganda, Disinformation, Armed Conflict, Russia-Ukraine War, and Emergency Services
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe

15. The changing face of Russia’s information war against Ukraine and other democratic countries: Lessons and recommendations. Interview with Professor Sinan Aral

Author:
Sinan Aral
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
Aral: Pre-2020 strategies of misinformation and disinformation have evolved over the last 5 years but they have not been any less intense. In fact, they have potentially been at least as intense and sometimes more intense. The tactics have changed. Before 2020, the western world was not as cognisant or prepared to deal with Russian dis- and misinformation online. And so, Russian tactics were much more overt. In particular, what they would do was use bots and human trolls and sock pockets to spread mis- and disinformation. And bots were a big part of it.3 I think that now what you see more of is the amplification of real voices because those are harder to take down. So instead of putting a false narrative out there, they would do a search for real people creating the narrative they want to promote and then amplify that narrative through reshares, retweets, likes, and amplifications as best as they can. And when the platforms look at that, they say ‘we can’t take this down because the originator of the post is a real human being that we can verify as real, not a Russian spy etc.’
Topic:
Cybersecurity, Social Media, Disinformation, Information Warfare, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

16. Russian Disinformation and Propaganda Campaign Justifying the Annexing of Crimea in 2014

Author:
Oksana Voytyuk
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Nowa Polityka Wschodnia
Institution:
Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
Abstract:
On February 26, 2014, the Russian Federation annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Russia's offensive actions have been condemned in the international arena, but this has in no way changed the decision of the authorities in the Kremlin. In order to prove the credibility of the occupation of Crimea, the Russian Federation launched a disinformation and propaganda campaign aimed primarily at the internal arena, ie at the Russians. The aim of the article is to analyze selected statements by Vladimir Putin regarding the annexation of Crimea and to try to answer the question of whether disinformation and internal propaganda were effective in convincing Russians that the occupation of Crimea was an act of restoring historical justice. For the purposes of the article, research methods appropriate for international relations were used.
Topic:
Propaganda, Annexation, Disinformation, and Invasion
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Crimea

17. How Chinese Propaganda Works

Author:
Grigol Julukhidze
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Georgian Foundation for Strategic International Studies -GFSIS
Abstract:
China is becoming an ever more powerful player in the international political arena. Once a regional power, it now represents the main rival to US global dominance. Over the last few years, Beijing has actively started to apply “propagandistic methods” in order to increase its importance and demonize actual or potential foes. From this point of view, the visibility of the Chinese propaganda model is not as high in Georgia as, for example, the Russian. The main task of the below-presented expert opinion is to illustrate and analyze one of the most powerful machines of disinformation in the world and answer the question, “How does Chinese propaganda work?”
Topic:
Propaganda, Disinformation, and International Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Asia, and Georgia

18. Russia’s War in Ukraine: Russia’s Propaganda War

Author:
Igor Gretskiy
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Centre for Defence and Security - ICDS
Abstract:
The ninth Brief in the “Russia’s War in Ukraine” series concerns Russia’s propaganda war. Igor Gretskiy, a Research Fellow of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute at the ICDS, examines key elements of Russia’s propaganda and disinformation that were crucial in the years long preparation of the invasion of Ukraine. He describes how the Kremlin’s official narratives were used to pave the way for Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, and how Russia’s propaganda has changed as the war has progressed. He states that the Kremlin began to prepare the Russian public for the invasion of Ukraine after the Biden-Putin summit in Geneva on the 30th of June 2021. He analyses Moscow’s language of war and concludes that Soviet-style narratives about Nazism and Western anti-Russian conspiracies became the main premises of the propaganda offensive. He also concludes that Russia’s president most likely began to plot the outright aggression after his re-election in 2018. Gretskiy further states that the Russian mainstream media failed to provoke the populations and local authorities in eastern Ukraine into mass defections to the Russian side and lost the battle for the Ukrainians’ hearts and minds. It rather intensified the Russian domestic neo-imperial narrative.
Topic:
Propaganda, Disinformation, Information Warfare, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

19. Securitization of Disinformation in NATO’s Lexicon: A Computational Text Analysis

Author:
Akın Ünver and Ahmet Kurnaz
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Following the Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections, disinformation and fake news became popular terms to help generate domestic awareness against foreign information operations globally. Today, a large number of politicians, diplomats, and civil society leaders identify disinformation and fake news as primary problems in both domestic and foreign policy contexts. But how do security institutions define disinformation and fake news in foreign and security policies, and how do their securitization strategies change over years? Using computational methods, this article explores 238,452 tweets from official NATO and affiliated accounts, as well as more than 2,000 NATO texts, news statements, and publications since January 2014, presenting an unsupervised structural topic model (stm) analysis to investigate the main thematic and discursive contexts of these texts. The study finds that NATO’s threat discourse and securitization strategies are heavily influenced by the US’ political lexicon, and that the organization’s word choice changes based on their likelihood of mobilizing alliance resources and cohesion. In addition, the study suggests that the recent disinformation agenda is, in fact, a continuity of NATO’s long-standing Russia-focused securitization strategy and their attempt to mobilize the Baltic states and Poland in support of NATO’s mission.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, Elections, Disinformation, and Securitization
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, and United States of America

20. The Era of Dis-and-Misinformation Volume XXII, Number 1

Author:
Nicole Kalczynski, Rebecca Blaser, Nicholas J. Cull, Peter J. Phillips, Gabriela Pohl, Michael Christensen, Leonie Holthaus, Bohdan Harasymiw, Feeza Vasudeva, Nicholas Barkdull, Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez, Nadra Hashim, and Vincent Chenzi
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University
Abstract:
As the world continues to recover from the devastating fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, navigating the harms of misinformation and disinformation remain at the forefront of global conversations on paving the path forward. Preventing the dissemination of false information—particularly during a time where the ways in which we engage with information environments have fundamentally changed—is increasingly complex. Social media platforms have enabled users to not only engage with media but become distributors of it themselves. When coupled with bad actors, limited repercussions, and poor content regulation, social networks are easily weaponized. At all scales of governance misinformation and disinformation campaigns pose a multidimensional threat. In Myanmar and China, disinformation campaigns were leveraged to target minority groups, while in Central and Eastern Europe, they serve as the cornerstone of destabilizing operations between adversarial states. In yet another facet, countries like Turkey, China, Russia, and Iran have embraced digital authoritarianism and restrict policies on internet accessibility under the pretext of stemming the spread of “fake news.” This year’s issue seeks to shed light on the nature of these evolving threats from a variety of innovative and understudied perspectives. This issue explores the causes and effects of the spread of misinformation and disinformation throughout different parts of the world and will be timely for years to come given the ever-increasing role and breadth of new technologies infiltrating people’s everyday lives.
Topic:
Corruption, Human Rights, Science and Technology, Authoritarianism, Democracy, Media, Internet, Social Media, Surveillance, COVID-19, Disinformation, Misinformation, and Fake News
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Iran, Sudan, Eurasia, Turkey, Ukraine, Middle East, India, Eastern Europe, Asia, Myanmar, Central Europe, and United States of America