"Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, however, have be
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en aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself." (Publisher description)
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"On December 15, Facebook announced that it had taken down three separate networks that it had discovered for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that targeted communities across Africa. One, centered on the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali, was linked to individuals associated with the Fr
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ench military. The other two, centered respectively on CAR and Libya, were connected to the business and influence operations of Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, founder of the mercenary organization Wagner Group and the Internet Research Agency “troll farm.” The French and Russian operations in the CAR tried to expose each other, and repeatedly clashed in groups, comments, and cartoon wars. We have documented the first of the Russian operations in a joint report with Stanford University entitled “Stoking Conflict by Keystroke”; this report focuses on the French and Russian operations that targeted CAR. For the sake of brevity, the operation linked to individuals with ties to the French military will be referred to as the “French operation” in this report, while the Russian operation attributed to individuals associated with past activity by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and previous operations attributed to entities associated with Russian financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin is referred to as the “Russian operation” in this report. It is worth highlighting that Facebook did not attribute the operation directly to the French Government or the French military, and that this report similarly does not offer evidence of institutional involvement from French governmental and military entities." (Executive summary)
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"Powerful countries use foreign media broadcasts to enhance their soft power, yet there is scant empirical evidence as to whether such efforts actually sway public opinion abroad. Moreover, researchers have not specified conditions that may shape variations in the influence of foreign broadcasts and
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internet. We propose a theory that predicts, respectively, opinionformation and issue-framing effects of foreign broadcasts as functions of the pervasiveness and familiarity of the issues they cover. We test our hypotheses by examining the potential effects of exposure to Russia-sourced broadcasts on views of Russia and other foreign policy issues in Kyrgyzstan, a most likely case of foreign media effects. Using an original, nationally representative survey conducted in Kyrgyzstan in 2015, we find that the influence of Russian media on Kyrgyzstani opinions varies according to the pervasiveness and familiarity of the issues at stake and is more limited than traditionally believed. The modest and conditional effects of foreign media in this particularly favorable environment cast doubt on the assumption that media are a soft-power tool “par excellence” and call for further research on how media can be used effectively for public diplomacy." (Introduction)
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"In Dark Double, Andrei P. Tsygankov focuses on the driving power of values and media, in addition to political and economic interests, in structuring US-Russia relations. By analyzing mainstream US newspapers and other media sources, Tsygankov identifies five media narratives involving Russia since
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the Cold War's ends and shows how Americans' negative views toward Russia draw from a deep wellspring of suspicion and are further enhanced by a biased media that regularly exploits such negativity, Russia's centralization of power and anti-American attitudes." (Publisher description)
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"As many as 1,967 anti-Western comments were detected in the 17 monitored media outlets in 2017. In contrast to 2016 and 2015, when negative messages targeted human identity and rights, in 2017, a dominant topic was the foreign policy with the messages aimed at increasing the polarization on the for
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eign policy orientation of the country. This change in the strategic communication of pro-Kremlin actors shows that “loss of identity” was a rather tactical message that prepared the ground, while the messaging aimed at demonizing Georgia’s strategic partners (USA, NATO, EU) is of strategic nature. The United States of America accounted for the highest share of negative comments (25.9%), up by almost three times as compared to the previous year, followed by NATO (18,4%) and the West (14,1%). Compared to 2016, messages against the European Union have almost doubled (13.4%) whereas the comments about the loss of identity and human rights in anti-Western context have almost halved (12.9%). Comments against nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and the US philanthropist George Soros have trebled, as compared to 2016, and comprised 7.3%; this increase can be explained by a stepped up activity of far-right groups and their campaign to smear Open Society Georgia Foundation. Yet another change as compared to the previous years were clearer messages showcasing Russia as an alternative to the West and idealizing the Soviet system (7.2%). Comments against Great Britain (0,8%) have been mainly detected in two pro-Kremlin online media outlets – Georgia and the World, and Sakinformi. Alike previous years, the main source of anti-Western messages was media (827), followed by politicians (463), society (411), civil organizations (230) and the clergy (37). The structure of the Kremlin narrative in the Georgian discourse consists of three stages and aims at: 1. Creating threats; 2. Sowing distrust towards partners and Western institutions; 3. Ingraining a belief that Russia is the only option in fighting against the threats and that authoritative/Soviet-style governance is necessary. Four major threats were emphasized by pro-Kremlin actors: threat of war; threat of loss of territories; threat of bio subversion; threat of loss of identity." (Key findings, page 7)
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"What were Soviet influence and disinformation campaigns? What did the West do about them? This study answers these questions, explaining the Cold War strategies followed by the USSR, as well as the Western response. Eleven case studies follow, each one examining a counter-disinformation tactic in d
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epth, with comments on the relevance of that tactic today. The first seven case studies focus on defensive tactics aimed at stopping Soviet propaganda in the West, while the latter four focus on offensive tactics used to promote accurate information and democratic messages to the USSR and beyond. The conclusion features a deeper examination of the difference between modern Russian propaganda and its Soviet antecedents." (Abstract)
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"The crisis in Ukraine has accentuated the position of Russian television as the government’s strongest asset in its information warfare. The internet, however, allows other players to challenge the Kremlin’s narrative by providing counter-narratives and debunking distorted information and fake
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images. Accounting for the new media ecology—through which strategic narratives are created and interpreted, this article scrutinizes the narratives of allegedly fake news on Channel One, perceiving the fabricated stories as extreme projections of Russia’s strategic narratives, and the attempts of the Ukrainian fact-checking website Stopfake.org to counter the Russian narrative by refuting misinformation and exposing misleading images about Ukraine. Secondly, it analyses how Twitter users judged the veracity of these news stories and contributed to the perpetuation of strategic narratives." (Abstract)
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"This paper sets out how Russia built up its disinformation campaign, by analyzing what was said and comparing it with what was done. Using open source and social media intelligence (OSSMINT), it exposes the false claims that Russia targeted ISIS or defeated international terrorism. It reveals that,
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far from being a partner in the fight against ISIS, Russia in fact acted as a party to the civil war in Syria, fighting for Assad and against the armed groups—especially those backed by the United States—that oppose both the Syrian leader and ISIS. This study concludes that Putin’s policy was to distract, deceive, and destroy. The buildup to the Russian air strikes distracted Western and Russian attention from Putin’s Ukrainian operations and the buildup of his forces in Syria. The official campaign reports deceived the world about the mission’s true targets and goals. The operation destroyed the capabilities of the only credible non-jihadist alternative to Assad’s regime, including those elements directly backed by the West. This fits a pattern of behavior already played out in Ukraine. It can be used as a template to predict, examine, and judge his future actions." (Executive summary, page 3)
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"Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime has taken control of the traditional media in Russia: TV, radio and newspapers. As Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has stated, the Kremlin sees the mass media as a ‘weapon’. Now Russia’s leadership is trying to take control of social media to
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o, and for this massive operation a new information warfare tool has been mobilised—an army of fake social media Putin-fans, known as ‘trolls’. My investigation has discovered that coordinated social media propaganda writers are twisting and manipulating the public debate in Finland, too. Trolls and bots distribute vast amounts of false information in various languages, and target individual citizens for aggressive operations. Aggressive trolls have created a feeling of fear among some of my interviewees, causing them to stop making Russia-related comments online. Trolling has had a serious impact on freedom of speech, even outside Russia. Thus, it should be viewed as a national security threat that needs to be addressed accordingly. The question is: how should the Kremlin’s trolls and disinformation be countered?" (Abstract)
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"The Kremlin exploits the idea of freedom of information to inject disinformation into society. The effect is not to persuade (as in classic public diplomacy) or earn credibility but to sow confusion via conspiracy theories and proliferate falsehoods. The Kremlin is increasing its “information war
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” budget. RT, which includes multilingual rolling news, a wire service and radio channels, has an estimated budget of over $300 million, set to increase by 41% to include German- and French language channels. There is increasing use of social media to spread disinformation and trolls to attack publications and personalities. Unlike in the Cold War, when Soviets largely supported leftist groups, a fluid approach to ideology now allows the Kremlin to simultaneously back far-left and far-right movements, greens, anti-globalists and financial elites. The aim is to exacerbate divides and create an echo chamber of Kremlin support. The Kremlin exploits the openness of liberal democracies to use the Orthodox Church and expatriate NGOs to further aggressive foreign policy goals." (Executive summary)
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"Après un aperçu sur la presse en U.R.S.S., l'auteur développe les thèmes suivants: Contacts entre les journalistes de tous les pays — Renforcer la solidarité de tous les journalistes progressistes — La part menée par les journalistes démocratiques dans divers pays, maintenus sous l'oppre
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ssion — L'U.R.S.S. est prête à aider les journalistes des pays en voie de développement, tant sur le plan des moyens matériels que sur le plan de la formation professionnelle. Article à base d'extraits de l'intervention de l'auteur à la session du Comité Exécutif de l'O.I.J., 13-15 janvier 1962." (Jean-Marie Van Bol, Abdelfattah Fakhfakh: The use of mass media in the developing countries. Brussels: CIDESA, 1971 Nr. 2063, topic code 163.20)
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