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 [...]
Russian state media last week predictably decried the U.S. takedown of websites linked to Iranian propaganda, including Press TV, as an attack on free speech and evidence that the United States is selective about its commitment to safeguarding a fre [...]
A prominent topic for the Russian state media ecosystem last week was the June 16 Biden-Putin summit in Geneva, Switzerland. Russian state media and diplomatic accounts on Twitter put out Page Six-style, celebrity event coverage of the meeting venue [...]
Overview Throughout President Biden’s first overseas trip as president—one that saw him attend the 47th G7 Summit in the United Kingdom, the 2021 NATO Brussels Summit and EU-U.S. Summit in Belgium, and a tête-à-tête with Russia President Vladimir Pu [...]
A notable narrative in Russian state media coverage of (and limited diplomatic reactions to) the G7 summit and related meetings was that the G7 is outdated, pointless, hypocritical, or exclusive, especially for not including China. State media also [...]
Last week, Russian state media provided substantial coverage of controversies surrounding the release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails and renewed U.S. interest in investigating the origins of the coronavirus. State media amplified domestic criticisms [...]
After Belarusian authorities forced a Ryanair plane to land in Minsk on May 23 and arrested opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, who was a passenger on the flight, Russian state media and diplomats strongly criticized Western responses to the in [...]
This paper is the second in a series on technology policy through the lens of national security, published in partnership with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. Read the first paper on the digita [...]
Last week, Russian state media continued to highlight incidents of police brutality during the protests in Colombia and related human rights concerns, though the volume of such content continued to taper off from its peak the first week of May. (On [...]
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a major story for Russian state media last week, with #Palestine the most frequently used topical hashtag by Russia’s Twitter accounts tracked on Hamilton, and Israel tied with Russia for the most-mentioned count [...]
Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow Bret Schafer joined "The Inoculation" to discuss Russia's disinformation and mal-information campaign around Western Covid-19 vaccines. Bret, the hosts, and other guests take a look at how the Russian governm [...]
Russian state media predictably used the Facebook Oversight Board’s ruling to uphold the company’s previous decision to ban former President Trump from the platform to advance its usual Big Tech censorship narrative and amplify Trump’s anti-Big Tech [...]
On May 11, ASD Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow Bret Schafer presented the new German Election Dashboard at a GMF Berlin event. The Dashboard is an interactive, open-source tool that allows users to track messaging from influential foreign an [...]
Over the past year, the regimes in Russia, China, and Iran have used a combination of public diplomacy, propaganda, and overt and covert disinformation campaigns to portray their respective responses to the pandemic as superior to those of the West. [...]
In the wake of the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency’s (Anvisa) decision not to authorize Sputnik V for import to Brazil, the Sputnik V Twitter account slammed the choice as the result of political pressure from the United States, criticized Anvisa [...]
“Disinformation is a deliberate falsehood put out to mislead an audience. But what we see more of are true bits of information where necessary context has been removed or manipulated in a way that makes it technically true but wildly misleading.” - [...]
Russia’s coronavirus vaccine coverage last week featured, as per usual, positive news about Sputnik V—such as Argentina starting local production of Sputnik V, the arrival of Sputnik in Venezuela, and reports of the vaccine’s overall efficacy—and ne [...]
Russian state media and diplomats predictably denounced last week’s new U.S. sanctions on the country, which the Russian Foreign Ministry characterized as an “attack.” They also criticized the rationale behind the sanctions, blamed the United States [...]
Amid heightened tensions in eastern Ukraine, Russian state media and diplomats last week reupped their usual narratives about the conflict: blaming Ukraine for the situation, suggesting that Russia poses no threat (but hinting that Russia could inte [...]
Last week, Russian state media—and in one instance the Russian Foreign Ministry—continued to hammer the United States over the migrant crisis at the southern border, characterizing the situation as a humanitarian disaster and highlighting reports of [...]
Russian state media last week hammered the United States over its response to the migrant crisis at the southern border, suggesting that the Biden administration is intentionally downplaying and concealing the poor conditions. State media amplified [...]
Following the publication of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of foreign interference in the 2020 election, Russian state media last week highlighted predictable backlash and denials from Russian government figures, with a small amount o [...]
Prior to President Biden’s address to the nation last Thursday, Russian state media covered speculation and reported concerns about Biden’s lack of press conferences, at times questioning his physical and/or mental health. They also highlighted an i [...]