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Putin's Disinformation & Misinformation Campaign

Jakub Ferencík

EUROPEUM (2022), 12 pp.

"Disinformation and misinformation have been amplified in the digital age. In order to combat their increasing presence in our everyday lives, we have to first educate ourselves on what disinformation is. In this post, Jakub Ferencik looks at this question in some detail, primarily by analyzing Vlad ... more

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Belarus Media Landscape Guide

CDAC Network (2022), 21 pp.

"This Media Landscape Guide was produced in January 2022. It provides a snapshot of the media at this time in Belarus. It provides an analysis of the recent shocks to the media landscape and an overview of the different types of media and information sources available for Belarusians: digital media ... more

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Shadow Forces: Hidden Malign Domestic and Foreign "Grey Zone" Media Influence in Central-Eastern Europe

Lóránt Gyõri

Political Capital Institute (2022), 39 pp.

"This paper is the summary of the results of a research project lasting over six months, covering domestic and foreign hidden malign influence activities pursued through the so-called "grey zone" media in three countries - the Czech Republic, Serbia and Hungary -, during a period of heightened inter ... more

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Independent Media Under Pressure: Evidence from Russia

Tom Paskhalis, Bryn Rosenfeld, Katerina Tertytchnaya

Post-Soviet Affairs, volume 38, issue 3 (2022), pp. 155-174

"Existing literature recognizes growing threats to press freedom around the world and documents changes in the tools used to stifle the independent press. However, few studies investigate how independent media respond to state pressure in an autocracy, documenting the impact of tactics that stop sho ... more

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Controlling China’s Digital Ecosystem: Observations on Chinese Social Media

Jennifer Pan

China Leadership Monitor, issue 72 (2022), 10 pp.

"Nowhere is the effort to control the flow of digital information more extensive and sustained than it is in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses a wide range of tools and strategies to achieve two related, but distinct, goals of digital information control: to shape public knowledge and to ... more

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The Informational Dictator's Dilemma: Citizen Responses to Media Censorship and Control in Russia and Belarus

Samuel A. Greene

PONARS Eurasia (2022), 9 pp.

"The findings described in this memo strongly suggest that "softer" strategies of media cooptation are more effective than harsher, more coercive approaches to media control. In Russia, where the Kremlin has-until very recently-used a combination of commercial pressure and political influence to pus ... more

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Is Telegram a “harbinger of Freedom”? The Performance, Practices, and Perception of Platforms as Political Actors in Authoritarian States

Mariëlle Wijermars, Tetyana Lokot

Post-Soviet Affairs, volume 38, issue 1-2 (2022), pp. 125-145

"This paper examines the practices, performance, and perceptions of the messaging platform Telegram as an actor in the 2020 Belarus protests, using publicly available data from Telegram’s public statements, protest-related Telegram groups, and media coverage. Developing a novel conceptualization o ... more

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Russia's Vigilante YouTube Stars: Digital Entrepreneurship and Heroic Masculinity in the Service of Flexible Authoritarianism

Anna Schwenck

Europe-Asia Studies, volume 74, issue 7 (2022), pp. 1166-1189

"Combating illegal parking and drinking in public is the raison d’être of Russia’s best-known law-and-order youth initiatives, StopKham and Lev Protiv. These initiatives enforce and promote neotraditional morals amongst young people by challenging alleged offenders on camera and uploading the e ... more

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Narrative russischer staatlicher Medien über Corona-Impfstoffe im Westen

Daria Zakharova

Russland-Analysen, issue 418 (2022), pp. 2-5

"Die überwiegende Mehrheit der Beiträge in russischen staatlichen Medien über Impfkampagnen im Westen haben eine negative Konnotation. Die Übertreibung der negativen Folgen einer Impfung mit Präparaten von BionTech/Pfizer und Moderna sowie die Überzeichnung der angeblich massenhaften Unzufried ... more

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The Revolution Will be Televised in Arabic: Iran’s Media Infrastructure Abroad

Hamdi Malik

Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy (2022), 19 pp.

"The media space is increasingly becoming yet another battlefield for the Islamic Republic to consolidate its hegemony throughout the Middle East. Iran’s media outreach, particularly in Arabic, is only likely to increase, especially online. Supreme Leader Khamenei is keen to see more activities do ... more

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You Are What You Read: Media, Identity, and Community in the 2020 Belarusian Uprising

Samuel A. Greene

Post-Soviet Affairs, volume 38, issue 1-2 (2022), pp. 88-106

"The movement that mobilized to oppose Alyaksandr Lukashenka in August 2020 was notable for its ability to bridge divisions of social class, geography, age, and identity. Almost uniquely among post-Soviet revolutionary movements, the Belarusians who rose up were not divided from those who did not al ... more

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Counter-Hegemonic Collaborations or Alliances of the Underdogs? The Case of TeleSUR with Al-Mayadeen, RT and CGTN

Pablo Sebastian Morales

Global Media and Communication, volume 18, issue 3 (2022), pp. 365-382

"This study explores how news channels from the Global South challenge western narratives by co-producing TV programmes. It focuses on Telesur (Venezuela) and its collaborations with RT (Russia), Al-Mayadeen (Lebanon) and CCTV/CGTN (China). By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this pap ... more

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Media Usage and Political Trust Among Young Adults in China: The Role of Media Credibility, Trust in Sources and Political Membership

Qiong Gong, Marc Verboord, Yijing Wang

Global Media and Communication, volume 18, issue 3 (2022), pp. 301-321

"On the basis of an online survey conducted among young Chinese adults, this study examines how the association between media usage and political trust can be explained by three factors: the mediating roles of the perceived credibility of traditional and social media; the moderating roles of trust i ... more

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Russlands unabhängiger Journalismus: Der harte Überlebenskampf unter totalitären Repressionsmaßnahmen

Sergej Parkhomenko

Potsdam: Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (2022), 39 pp.

"Der Journalist und Verleger Sergej Parkhomenko ist ein international gefeierter Menschenrechtsverteidiger, Oppositionsaktivist und unter den russischen Medienschaffenden einer der wichtigsten Partner für das Internationale Journalisten- und Mediendialogprogramm (IJMD) der Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftun ... more

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Russia: "You Will be Arrested Anyway." Reprisals Against Monitors and Media Workers Reporting from Protests

London: Amnesty International (2022), 48 pp.

"This document looks into the human rights violations committed against two specific groups who play important roles for the enjoyment of the right to peaceful assembly. The first group – public assembly monitors – performs a watchdog function by recording how rigorously the authorities observe ... more

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Winning the Web: How Beijing Exploits Search Results to Shape Views of Xinjiang and COVID-19

Jessica Brandt, Bret Schafer, Elen Aghekyan, Valerie Wirtschafter, Adya Danaditya

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution (2022), 47 pp.

"For months, our team has been tracking how China has exploited search engine results on Xinjiang and COVID-19, two subjects that are geopolitically salient to Beijing — Xinjiang, because the Chinese government seeks to push back on condemnation of its rights record; COVID-19, because it seeks to ... more

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»For a Journalist, Keeping Silent is a Crime«. Russian Independent Media: Caught Between Responsibility and Wartime Censorship

Daria Gordeva

Journalistik. Zeitschrift für Journalismusforschung, volume 5, issue 2 (2022), pp. 163-171

"It did not take long after the first Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine for the Russian government to tighten its censorship laws. The Duma (parliament), the media supervisory authority Roskomnadzor, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Ministry of Justice joined forces to com ... more

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Steuerung der öffentlichen Meinung

Russland-Analysen, issue 418 (2022), pp. 1-14

"Wie denken gewöhnliche Russ:innen wirklich über die Entscheidung von Präsident Putin, in die Ukraine einzumarschieren? Obwohl einiges dafürspricht, dass frühere Umfragen, die Zustimmungswerte um 60 % für den Krieg zeigen, als genuine Signale der russischen öffentlichen Meinung gewertet werde ... more

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The Kremlin's Troll Network Never Sleeps: Inauthentic Pro-Kremlin Online Behavior on Facebook in Germany, Italy, Romania and Hungary

Lóránt Gyori, Csaba Molnár, Péter Krekó, Patrik Szicherle et al.

Budapest: Political Capital Institute (2022), 36 pp.

"The research – based on programmatic text-mining supported analyses of several millions of war-related comments scraped by Sentione and further examined with CrowdTangle - found traces of inauthentic, repetitive pro-Kremlin activity on Facebook in all countries under review, which can be consider ... ed attempts to influence public opinion in the affected states and, in some cases, beyond them. Our main conclusions are: Crises help the Kremlin. Even if public opinion in the EU is currently unfavorable to the Kremlin, the onset of high, permanent inflation, soaring energy prices and the looming danger of an EU-wide recession could create a more favorable environment for the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts. Most (covertly) Kremlin-friendly forces will adopt a rhetoric blasting sanctions for harming Europe more than Russia. Importing disinformation narratives. Three out of the four narratives found in Hungary were imported into the country from abroad. One doubting Ukraine’s existence as a country started from an organization connected to Ukrainian pro-Putin oligarch Viktor Medvechuk, taken over by the so-called “news agency” of separatists. Another narrative detailing a new, dictatorial world order based on, among others, COVID-19 restrictions, and led by NATO was aimed at developing countries where Russia can hope to hold more sway. The third essentially took over a trend in the Russian media space: users tried to discredit anti-war voices by asking them “where they were in the past eight years” when Ukraine committed atrocities against minorities. Strategies in Germany: Divide and Rule. The six relevant narratives we found in Germany employed three different strategies. The first was anti-Westernism, where the US and NATO are to blame for Russia’s attack. The second aimed clearly at generating debates by spreading a Kremlin-critical narrative. Some profiles involved in this were caught disseminating both pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin narratives, which indicates it is not intended to counter the Kremlin’s information operation but to be a part of it. The third strategy was about exploiting contemporary events - such as heightened discussions on sanctions and rising inflation." (Executive summary) more

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Effectiveness of the Sanctions on Russian State-Affiliated Media in the European Union: An Investigation Into Website Traffic and Possible Circumvention Methods

Kata Balint, Jordan Wildon, Francesca Arcostanzo, Kevin D. Reyes

Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2022), 20 pp.

"The purpose of this research is two-fold: first, to assess the effectiveness of the restrictions placed on Russian state-affiliated media by the European Union after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; second, to unearth potential circumvention methods and their success in enabling pro-Kr ... more