Short-form insights and rapid-reaction analysis of breaking news and global events.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party maintained its parliamentary majority in elections marked by apparent Kremlin-directed ballot tampering. Ahead of the elections, Russian government officials and state media used unfo [...]
Foreign actors have demonstrated an interest in Germany’s federal election this year. Of particular concern is the fact that Russian state-backed media have developed a wide reach within Germany and are actively engaging in election discourse. Since [...]
This year’s German federal election poses a challenge not only to the involved candidates and their corresponding parties, but to the entire German political landscape. Several articles and reports have highlighted the susceptibility of the election [...]
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 [...]
On September 26, around 60 million voters in Germany will be able to cast their ballots in the 2021 parliamentary elections. After 16 years in power, incumbent chancellor Angela Merkel is not running for office, and a change in government leadership [...]
Disinformation-fueled partisan “audits” have been popping up around the United States in the ten months since the 2020 presidential election. Election workers face unprecedented levels of harassment sparked by false voter-fraud claims. And 51 percen [...]
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 [...]
Digital attacks on critical infrastructure are occurring at a pace that is overwhelming defenders, yet not alarming the public enough to push for greater accountability in the defense of hospitals, schools, and energy distributors. For over a decade [...]
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 [...]
Sooner or later harmful trends observed in the United States often take hold in Germany. They might not be at the scale of what Americans confront, but the telltale signs are evident even in Germany’s strong democracy. That especially applies to ele [...]
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 [...]
On April 19, 2021, Annalena Baerbock was announced as the German Green Party candidate for chancellor. With this nomination, Baerbock became the only woman in the race to succeed Angela Merkel. However, her nomination was undermined from the outset [...]
Russia Last week, Russian state media and diplomats continued to focus on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, highlighting chaotic scenes on the ground, criticizing the Biden administration’s efforts, and amplifying confusion and tension between t [...]
Much has been said about Apple’s recently announced “Child Safety” initiatives. The focus has been (rightly so) on the perceptions of user privacy and implications of content processing happening on user devices versus cloud servers. Child safety pr [...]
July saw a continuation of foreign actors’ active engagement in German online political discourse through state-backed media and diplomatic accounts. As in previous months, Russian actors put a particular emphasis on disseminating anti-vaccination n [...]
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 [...]
In recent years, China’s state-backed interference, in the form of information manipulation, cyber operations, and economic coercion, has slowly constrained the EU’s ability to effectively safeguard its values and autonomy when dealing with China. T [...]
Russia Last week, Russian state media and diplomats continued to focus heavily on the Tokyo Olympics, celebrating Russian successes and amplifying President Putin’s claim that the ban of Russia’s name, flag, and anthem for violating anti-doping rule [...]
Why It Matters After 16 years of government under Chancellor Angela Merkel and 8 years in a so-called “grand coalition” between the CDU/CSU and the SPD, it is all but certain that the federal elections in September will bring a change in government [...]
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 [...]
ASD's Nad’a Kovalčíková and Globsec's Dominika Hajdu and Miroslava Sawiris present the Alliance for Healthy Infosphere's Ten Transatlantic Principles for a Healthy Online Information Space. The U.S. Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, fueled by dis [...]
Germany’s upcoming federal election in September is not only important for the German people but can be an alluring target for foreign and domestic actors seeking to influence the future trajectory of the country or seeking to undermine democratic p [...]
Iranian operatives' attempt to kidnap Masih Alinejad highlights the critical role that dissidents and defectors play in combatting authoritarianism—as well as the risks autocrats will take to silence them. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors an [...]
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 [...]
What We’re Seeing on the 2021 German Elections Dashboard In June, as in previous months, foreign state-backed media and diplomatic accounts actively engaged in online German political discourses, at times manipulating information. Russian actors con [...]
What becomes of a Kremlin troll farm when its fake accounts are repeatedly taken down? It sheds its skin and morphs into something new, all while continuing its efforts to bend public opinion towards a Putinesque view of the world. Since its much-pu [...]
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 [...]
What We're Seeing on the 2021 German Elections Dashboard Russia Covid-19 Following April’s trend, Russian state-backed actors continued their extensive coverage of coronavirus-related topics. Six of the seven most watched YouTube videos from RT Deu [...]
Covid-19 vaccines and “mask diplomacy” have been the centerpieces of many countries’ soft power strategies over the past year. Early in the pandemic, countries like Russia and China sought to use shipments of personal protective equipment (PPE) and [...]
In the final year of the Trump administration, the U.S. government issued a flurry of actions related to China, utilizing a diverse basket of economic statecraft tools in furtherance of national security objectives.The Trump administration’s tariffs [...]
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 [...]
President Biden’s trip to demonstrate “America’s renewed commitment to our allies and partners” and showcase “the capacity of democracies to both meet the challenges and deter the threats” culminates with a one-on-one meeting between Biden and Russi [...]
While President Joe Biden’s critics have been arguing that sitting down with Putin on June 16 would look weak and wobbly, White House officials have kept their heads down and laid the groundwork for what could become the most sweeping policy initiat [...]
For years, Alexander Lukashenko has been a problem frequently discussed but easily forgotten. When Belarus forced Ryanair flight FR4978 to land in Minsk and arrested Raman Pratasevich and Sofia Sapega, it took away the freedom and security not only [...]
Last month—nearly five months after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election— Arizona Republicans began an “audit” of millions of ballots in Arizona’s largest county, which President Biden won by 45,109 votes. The state Senate hired a [...]
March and April Monitoring: Russian State-Backed Media ASD and GMF analyzed data from the German Elections Dashboard to understand the narratives that state-backed actors are pushing ahead of the German federal elections in September. In March and [...]
Overview Over the past ten days, renewed violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories has become a major story in the global news cycle. Russia, China, and Iran have each devoted significant coverage to the situation, but Chinese diplomats and [...]
In April 2021, ASD held a security and geopolitics workshop as part of the Good Web project entitled “Tensions: Authoritarian Internet Threats and Democratic Responses,” in which participants debated the merits of different responses democracies hav [...]