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state media coverage of (and limited diplomatic reactions to) the G7 summit and related meetings was that the G7 is outdated, pointless, hypocritical, or exclusive, especially for not including China.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 [...]
Last week, a prominent theme in Russian messaging around coronavirus vaccines targeted the prospect of Sputnik V’s approval in the EU, with the vaccine’s Twitter account calling for the EU’s European Medicines Agency to review and approve it (the ap [...]
Introduction When Vladimir Putin announced last August that Russia had granted regulatory approval for Sputnik V, the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, it signaled—albeit perhaps prematurely—not only a potential turning point in the fight to end th [...]
Media and Digital Disinformation Fellow Bret Schafer joined Josh Hamilton on The Jist. Bret and Josh first spoke three to discuss the weaponization of information and the threat to democracy. Now, three years later, things have unfortunately not gott [...]
Last week, Russian state media seized on a story involving “leaked” U.K. Foreign Office documents that allegedly revealed the “UK government's covert operations aimed at tarnishing Russia's image.” The outlets used the story to accuse both the U.K. [...]
The weather disaster in Texas last week provided ample fodder for Russian state media, which pointed to the disaster as evidence that the United States is incapable of protecting its citizens or highlighted viral politically polarized responses to T [...]
Last week, Russian state media and diplomats highlighted various instances of alleged censorship by social media companies—a recurring theme in Russia’s external messaging. State media cited Twitter’s ban of Project Veritas as an example of politica [...]
In last week’s coronavirus vaccine developments, U.K. medical journal The Lancet published the results of a peer-reviewed study that placed Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine’s efficacy at a level comparable to that of leading Western vaccines. Russian stat [...]
Was Ayatollah Khamenei behind a now-banned Twitter account that threatened to assassinate former President Trump? Recently, Twitter permanently suspended an account—@Khamenei_site–following a tweet that was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled thr [...]
The Russian embassy in Mexico’s Twitter account received uncharacteristically high engagement last week after a January 25 phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during which they discu [...]
While the weekend’s protests against the detention of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny upon his return to Russia fell outside of the week monitored, his arrest was accompanied by official statements characterizing Navalny as a criminal, crit [...]
Overview Since the riot at the U.S. capitol on January 6, there has been a clear element of schadenfreude in Iranian, Russian, and Chinese state media coverage of political and social disunion in the United States. That adversarial state media outle [...]
In response to tech platforms’ more aggressive content moderation in the wake of the capitol riots (including Facebook and Twitter banning President Trump), RT has drilled down on the narrative of censorship, with isolated examples from other Russia [...]
Russian state media provided substantial breaking news coverage of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. One prominent theme in coverage of the aftermath included the idea that the United States is no longer, or never was, a global model for [...]
Last week, Russian state media and diplomats continued to champion the Sputnik V vaccine, with the announcement of a deal for Venezuela to buy 10 million doses of the Russian vaccine receiving particular attention. Four of the top ten most-retweeted [...]
Russian state media and diplomats sought to characterize the attribution of the SolarWinds hack that affected multiple U.S. government agencies and private sectors companies to Russia as part of the tradition of the United States blaming Russia for [...]
This paper is the first 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. Introduction Open societies have [...]