Document details

1st EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats: Towards a Framework for Networked Defence

European Union (2023), 35 pp.

Contains 18 figures, 4 tables, bibliogr. pp. 34-35

"Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine dominates observed Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) activity. Ukraine and its representatives have been the direct target of 33 incidents. In 60 out of 100 incidents, supporting the invasion was the main motivation behind the attack. Diplomatic channels are an integral part of FIMI incidents. Russia's diplomatic channels regularly serve as enablers of FIMI operations. They are deployed across wide range of topics. China also uses diplomatic channels, mostly targeting the US. Impersonation techniques become more sophisticated. Impersonations of international and trusted organisations and individuals are used by Russian actors particularly to target Ukraine. Print and TV media are most often impersonated, with magazines seeing their entire style copied. FIMI actor collusion exists but is limited. Official Russian actors were involved in 88 analysed FIMI incidents. Chinese actors were involved in 17. In at least 5 cases, both actors engaged jointly. FIMI is multilingual. Incidents do not occur in just one language; content is translated and amplified in multiple languages. Incidents featured at least 30 languages, 16 of which are EU-languages. Russia used a larger variety of languages than Chinese actors but 44% of Russian content targeted a Russian-speaking populations, while 36% targeted English-speaking populations. FIMI is mostly intended to distract and distort. Russia (42%) and China (56%) mostly intend to direct attention to a different actor or narrative or to shift blame ('distract'). Russia attempts to change the framing and narrative ('distort') relatively more often (35%) than China (18%). FIMI remains mostly image and video based. The cheap and easy production and distribution of image and video material online makes these formats still the most commonly used." (Executive summary)
1 Introduction, 7
2 Focus on Key FIMI Actors, 9
3 Pilot Analysis on EEAS Priority Actors and Issues in 2022, 11
(Threat) Actors -- Behaviour -- Content -- Degree -- Effect
4 A Behaviour-Centred Problem Definition: Introducing the Notion of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), 25
5 An Analytical Framework for FIMI Threat Analysis, 27
Conclusion, 32
Recommendations, 33