Intense interest by diplomats and state media underscores the significance of Russia’s intervention. Russian propaganda accounts on Twitter went into overdrive this month as troops from a Russian-led regional security organization were dispatched t [...]
Russia Last week, Russian diplomats and state media launched a high-volume propaganda campaign around protests in Kazakhstan, which were started by anger over fuel prices and suppressed with the help of Russian troops. Kremlin-backed messengers refe [...]
Russia For the past two weeks, Russian diplomats and state media continued to focus most of their attention on the conflict in Ukraine. On December 30, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin exchanged warnings over the Ukraini [...]
Russia Last week, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published two draft treaties—one for NATO and the other for the United States—that listed a series of demands that would limit the alliance’s presence in Eastern Europe. The recommended agreemen [...]
Russia Russian diplomats and state media last week continued to focus much of their attention on developments around the conflict in Ukraine. On December 7, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a virtual meeting to disc [...]
Last week, U.S. President Joseph R. Biden hosted a virtual Summit for Democracy with 110 countries and governments, in which he called on leaders to make commitments to bolster democracy before an in-person summit is hosted later in 2022—but did the [...]
Russia Kremlin-backed accounts last week continued to focus heavily on the tension between Russia and the West caused by Russia’s military buildup along the Ukrainian border. RT warned that “the risk of an all-out armed conflict in south-eastern Ukr [...]
Panelists: Anneli Ahonen, Senior Fellow, ISD Global, and Former Head of East Stratcom Task Force, EEAS & EU vs Disinfo Renée DiResta, Research Manager, Stanford Internet Observatory Lee Foster, Senior Vice President, Althea Group and Former Dire [...]
On December 9 and 10, U.S. President Joseph R. Biden will bring together leaders from 110 countries and governments for a virtual Summit for Democracy based around three key themes: defending against authoritarianism; addressing and fighting corrupt [...]
Russia Last week, Kremlin-affiliated messengers pushed combative messaging around the conflict in Ukraine. Russian officials and state media continued to blame the “'collective West’ under the leadership of the USA” for tensions along the Ukrainian [...]
Russia Last week, Russian diplomats and state-funded outlets continued their media push around the Belarusian-manufactured migrant crisis playing out on the Polish border, resulting in both “border” and “migrant” appearing among the top five most fr [...]
Russia Last week, Russian diplomats and state media put forward a massive amount of commentary on the migrant crisis taking place on the Belarusian-Polish border. Six of the top ten most frequently used phrases by Russian accounts tracked on Hamilto [...]
The alignment of interests between the German right-wing party, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), and Russia’s flagship German-language media outlet, RT Deutsch, is both well-documented and unsurprising, given the Kremlin’s penchant for supporting [...]
Russia Russian officials and state media continued their messaging push around the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, making the meeting’s abbreviation, COP26, the most used hashtag last week by Moscow-linked accounts monitored on Hamilton 2 [...]
Russia Last week, Russian diplomats and state-funded media provided updates on the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Rome. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not attend the meeting but delivered a video address that criticized unnamed G20 members for al [...]
Russia Last week, Russian diplomats and state-funded media disparaged NATO to justify the Kremlin’s move to suspend its permanent mission to the alliance. Moscow’s decision followed NATO’s expulsion of eight members of the Russian mission for allege [...]
Early last year when U.S. health experts looked into the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China — either accidentally or on purpose — Chinese propaganda-makers responded. They amplified rumors that the virus came from the United States [...]
Russia Last week, Russian officials and state-funded media continued to push back on accusations that the Kremlin abused its dominance in the European energy market to cause the continent’s gas shortage. Moscow-linked outlets amplified President Vla [...]
The Alliance for Securing Democracy hosted Dr. Teija Tiilikainen, director of the European Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats (CoE), for a candid discussion on the informational threats facing Europe today, as well as practical, inter-disciplina [...]
Russia Last week, Russian officials and state media focused on the surging gas prices in Europe, which some EU politicians have said stems from Russia manipulating the gas market to speed up the launch of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. State-backed out [...]
YouTube’s decision last week to remove RT’s German-language channels for violating the platform’s coronavirus misinformation policy sparked an outcry from Moscow, with the foreign ministry claiming that the move was “fully in line with the logic of [...]
Searching about Fort Detrick? You’ll likely find Chinese propaganda, an ASD study finds. Chinese government officials and state media are exploiting gaps in search results on powerful engines like Google, YouTube and Bing to advance conspiracy theo [...]
Russia Last week, Russian officials and state media were outraged by YouTube’s decision to take down RT’s German-language channels for violating the platform’s coronavirus misinformation policy. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called YouTube [...]
Since the earliest days of the pandemic, Chinese state officials and media outlets have disseminated conspiracy narratives claiming that COVID-19 originated at Fort Detrick—a U.S. army research facility in Maryland that has been the target of disinf [...]
Russian disinformation campaigns have become notorious around the world for their ability to cause chaos. And while some suggest Moscow’s motives begin and end with creating havoc, the reality is that Russia has clear strategic goals in mind. The Kr [...]
Russia Last week, Russian officials and state media focused heavily on the UN General Assembly (UNGA), making it the most frequently used phrase on the Moscow-linked Twitter dashboard. Much of the coverage attempted to highlight Russia’s diplomatic [...]
Russia Last week, Russian government officials and state-funded outlets focused heavily on Russia’s parliamentary elections, which were held from Friday to Sunday and resulted in President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party maintaining its majorit [...]
Russia Continuing a weeks-long trend, Afghanistan dominated the outputs of Russian state media last week, with the country registering as the second or third most-mentioned country in videos, tweets, and articles posted by state media accounts and o [...]
Russia Last week, Russian state media and diplomats continued to focus on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover of the country; although, the amount of coverage declined slightly from previous weeks. Kremlin-linked Twitter [...]
RT Deutsch, the Kremlin-backed media outlet, has become a major player on social media just weeks before the polls open. A video on YouTube alleging anti-vaccine conspiracy theories in Germany was viewed more than a million times. A Facebook post p [...]
Germany’s ongoing election campaign is an alluring target for foreign and domestic actors seeking to influence and undermine the democratic process. The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) and the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the U [...]
Russia Last week, Russian diplomats and state media continued to provide extensive coverage of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the associated fallout. Russian Twitter accounts monitored on Hamilton 2.0 mentioned Afghanistan more than any ot [...]
Russia Last week, Russian state media and diplomats focused heavily on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s campaign to seize control of the country. Alongside coverage of the unfolding chaos and humanitarian crisis, Russian accoun [...]
Russia As with most international media outlets, Russian state media outlets focused heavily on coverage of the Tokyo Olympics last week, a topic discussed in more detail in a recently published ASD blog post. They also continued to stoke vaccine sk [...]
Authoritarians have long used international sporting competitions as a platform for advancing political and geopolitical agendas, from using the successes of their athletes to boost national pride to opportunistically leveraging the global spotlight [...]
Russia The announcement of a U.S.-Germany deal on Nord Stream 2 last week provoked some criticism from Russian diplomats, who objected to the agreement’s “hostile” stance toward Russia. RIA Novosti also ran at least a couple of articles highlighting [...]
Russia In coverage of the anti-government protests in Cuba, Russian state media amplified calls to end the U.S. embargo on the country and Cuban officials’ accusations that U.S.-funded mercenaries are fomenting the protests. The Russian Foreign Mini [...]
Russian state media and diplomats extensively covered the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last week, with Afghanistan ranking as the third most mentioned country and “Taliban” as one of the top 10 key phrases by monitored accounts. Notable narrativ [...]
Since Washington launched the Wuhan lab leak investigation, Beijing has been pushing bizarre narratives. When the Biden administration announced it would reexamine the theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab, Beijing’s response was deny an [...]
Russian diplomatic accounts and state media widely promoted an article (English translation, Kommersant link) by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, pulling out various excerpts from the piece, including claims that the West is “imposing” its va [...]