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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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Content Moderation in autoritären Staaten: Wie soziale Medien zu Komplizen autoritärer Herrscher zu werden drohen

Paula Köhler, Daniel Voelsen

Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) (2022), 8 pp.

"Täglich gibt es Berichte darüber, wie private Betreiber sozialer Medien sich problematischen Vorgaben autoritärer Herrscher beugen. Ob in Thailand, Kasachstan oder Russland, immer wieder werden als Teil von Content Moderation (CM) gezielt Inhalte entfernt oder Konten gelöscht, weil Regierungen ... more

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Choosing Propaganda: Media Selection and Politics in Putin's Russia

Ashley Katrine Blum

Los Angeles: University of California, Doctoral Thesis (2022), xiv, 160 pp.

"The results of this dissertation suggest that most Russians are aware, at least to some degree, of the biases of state media. Nonetheless, they still consider these sources to provide valuable information. This, in part, stems from beliefs about the access these news outlets have to information and ... more

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Digital Journalism in China

Shixin Ivy Zhang (ed.)

London: Routledge (2022), xiii, 120 pp.

"This volume explores the implications of digital media technologies for journalists’ professional practice, news users’ consumption and engagement with news, as well as the shifting institutional, organizational and financial structures of news media. Drawing on case studies and quantitative an ... 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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Freedom on the Net 2022: Countering an Authoritarian Overhaul of the Internet

Washington, DC: Freedom House (2022), 46 pp.

"1. Global internet freedom declined for the 12th consecutive year. The sharpest downgrades were documented in Russia, Myanmar, Sudan, and Libya. Following the Russian military’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin dramatically intensified its ongoing efforts to suppress domest ... ic dissent and accelerated the closure or exile of the country’s remaining independent media outlets. In at least 53 countries, users faced legal repercussions for expressing themselves online, often leading to draconian prison terms. 2 Governments are breaking apart the global internet to create more controllable online spaces. A record number of national governments blocked websites with nonviolent political, social, or religious content, undermining the rights to free expression and access to information. A majority of these blocks targeted sources located outside of the country. New national laws posed an additional threat to the free flow of information by centralizing technical infrastructure and applying flawed regulations to social media platforms and user data. 3. China was the world’s worst environment for internet freedom for the eighth consecutive year. Censorship intensified during the 2022 Beijing Olympics and after tennis star Peng Shuai accused a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official of sexual assault. The government continued to tighten its control over the country’s booming technology sector, including through new rules that require platforms to use their algorithmic systems to promote CCP ideology. 4. A record 26 countries experienced internet freedom improvements. Despite the overall global decline, civil society organizations in many countries have driven collaborative efforts to improve legislation, develop media resilience, and ensure accountability among technology companies. Successful collective actions against internet shutdowns offered a model for further progress on other problems like commercial spyware. 5. Internet freedom in the United States improved marginally for the first time in six years. There were fewer reported cases of targeted surveillance and online harassment during protests compared with the previous year, and the country now ranks ninth globally, tied with Australia and France. The United States still lacks a comprehensive federal privacy law, and policymakers made little progress on the passage of other legislation related to internet freedom. Ahead of the November 2022 midterm elections, the online environment was riddled with political disinformation, conspiracy theories, and online harassment aimed at election workers and officials. 6. Human rights hang in the balance amid a competition to control the web. Authoritarian states are vying to propagate their model of digital control around the world. In response, a coalition of democratic governments has increased the promotion of online human rights at multilateral forums, outlining a positive vision for the internet. However, their progress remains hampered by problematic internet freedom practices in their own countries." (Key findings) 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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The Evolution in the Taliban’s Media Strategy

Weeda Mehran

George Washington University, Program on Extremism (2022), 8 pp.

"In the mid-1990s, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan for the first time. They banned photography, TV, music, and all forms of entertainment. Soon after, the Taliban banned the internet in early 2001, and then-Foreign Minister Mawlavi Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil famously stated, “We want to establ ... more

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Russian Information Warfare

Russian Analytical Digest, issue 282 (2022), 23 pp.

"Over the past decade, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has employed unorthodox foreign policy tools with increasing frequency, intensity, and success. Perhaps the most effective of these tactics has been the use of information warfare designed to affect decision-making in countries Russia considers to be ... more

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China’s Digital Power: Assessing the Implications for the EU

Brigitte Dekker, Maaike Okano-Heijmans

Digital Power China Research Consortium (2022), 103 pp.

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How Big Data Can Bolster Autocratic Legitimacy (Via the Rhetoric of Safety and Convenience)

Prithvi Subramani Iyer

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2022), 14 pp.

"This Policy Brief examines the different ways in which big data collection serves autocratic agendas by hiding the oppressive potential of heightened surveillance through promises of enhanced safety, convenience, and modernisation. Political actors with autocratic agendas can package their governan ... 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

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Media Assistance in Burma’s Reform Decade

Jane Madlyn McElhone

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2022), 35 pp.

"Using the coup as a vantage point, interviewees for this report were asked to reflect on three main questions: What have we learned about past media reform efforts? With hindsight, what are the legacies, best practices, and lessons learned? With a view to the future, what does the media’s respons ... more

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Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media

Marc Owen Jones

London: Hurst & Company (2022), 303 pp.

"By the time readers arrive at the end of Jones’s astonishing examination of social media in the Middle East, they will be completely persuaded that it is now impossible to tell whether anything they read online is true. Replete with bots and sock puppets, trolls and dupes, this online world is bo ... more

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Authoritarians on a Media Offensive in the Midst of War: The Informational Influence of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and the Gulf States in Southeast Europe

Rumena Filipova, Vladimir Shopov

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) (2022), iii, 127 pp.

"The publication analyzes the emerging trends of foreign authoritarian-state disinformation in the context of the war in Ukraine in a comparative manner focusing on 7 states of Southeast Europe (Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania). It examines ... more

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Russian Social Network VK Gains Carte Blanche Following the Closure of Instagram and Facebook in the Country

Daria Zakharova

Russia Analytical Digest, issue 280 (2022), pp. 20-21

"As the Russian invasion of Ukraine erupted, the country’s authorities declared a war on Western social media as well. In March, such social media giants as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were blocked in Russia, giving their local competitor—named VK—a virtual monopoly in the country. Millio ... more

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Limitations of Anti-War Messaging Oriented at Russians

Fyodor Krashennikov

Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) (2022), 11 pp.

"This paper offers a critical overview of anti-war propaganda in the Russian language during the first six months of the war and identifies the reasons for its limited success. After a review of the challenges to current forms of propaganda, the paper offers practical recommendations to improve the ... more

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Religious Populism, Cyberspace and Digital Authoritarianism in Asia

Ihsan Yilmaz, Raja M. Ali Saleem, Mahmoud Pargoo, Syaza Shukri, Idznursham Ismail, Kainat Shakil

Brussels: European Center for Populsim Studies (ECPS) (2022), 43 pp.