The coronavirus pandemic is creating an opportunity for foreign actors who seek to undermine Western democracies to advance their goals. From weekly reports that track messaging from Russian and Chinese state-backed media and diplomatic actors, to pieces that analyze the geopolitical impact of crisis, ASD’s work on coronavirus can be found here.
Hamilton Toplines: May 16–22, 2022
Russia Russian officials and state media last week posted more than 800 tweets about Finland and Sweden’s applications for NATO membership, making “NATO” the most frequently used keyword by Kremlin-linked accounts. On May 16, President Vladimir Puti [...]
Hamilton Toplines: May 9–15, 2022
Russia Russian propagandists last week reacted to Finland and Sweden’s announced bids to join NATO by threatening military retaliation, accusing the two countries of violating international agreements, and highlighting division within NATO. Russia’s [...]
Hamilton Toplines: April 11–17, 2022
Russia Russian diplomats and state media last week mentioned “Mariupol” in nearly 500 tweets as they blamed Ukrainian Nazis and their Western backers for war crimes committed in the battered Ukrainian port city. Diplomatic accounts claimed that Ukra [...]
Hamilton Toplines: April 4–10, 2022
Russia The push by Russian propagandists last week to distort information on the atrocities in Bucha marked the Kremlin’s most aggressive disinformation campaign of the war. Russian diplomats and state media tweeted the term “Bucha” more than 1,000 [...]
Hamilton Toplines: March 21–27, 2022
Russia Last week, “Biden” was the third most used phrase by Russian diplomats and state media on Twitter, as Kremlin-linked accounts attacked the U.S. president for saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin was a “butcher” who “cannot remain in p [...]
Hamilton Toplines: March 14–March 20, 2022
Russia Russian diplomats and state media last week promoted new evidence to support their conspiracy narrative about the presence of U.S.-funded bioweapon labs in Ukraine, though the number of tweets from Russian propagandists with the term “biologi [...]
Hamilton Toplines: March 7–13, 2022
Russia Russian diplomats and state media last week tweeted the word “biological” nearly 600 times as they advanced their disinformation campaign about U.S.-funded bioweapon facilities in Ukraine. U.S. officials and independent reporters have stated [...]
Hamilton Toplines: Dec 6–12, 2021
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 [...]
Hamilton Toplines: November 1–November 7, 2021
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 [...]
The German Elections Dashboard in September 2021: Foreign Election Coverage and RT Deutsch’s YouTube Ban
September was an important month for German politics with the federal elections taking place on September 26. Our pre-election analysis demonstrated the reach of and bias in Russian coverage ahead of the elections. Both before and after the election [...]
Bret Schafer on NPR: How China Spreads Misinformation Around the World
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 [...]
Hamilton Toplines: October 11–17, 2021
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 [...]