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: December 26, 2020-January 1, 2021
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 [...]
Hamilton Toplines: December 12-18, 2020
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 [...]
Jessica Brandt on How China’s “Wolf Warrior” Diplomats Use Twitter to Troll Beijing’s Enemies in Vox
Head of Policy and Research Jessica Brandt spoke to Vox's Alex Ward about China's information manipulation tactics. China has a new weapon in its global information warfare arsenal: “wolf warriors.” Named after a popular Chinese nationalistic film [...]
Hamilton Toplines: December 5-11, 2020
Continuing a pattern seen in recent weeks, Russian state media covered various issues and concerns related to Western coronavirus vaccines and lamented the alleged anti-Russia bias in Western media coverage of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Meanwhile, [...]
Hamilton Toplines: November 28-December 4, 2020
As with previous weeks, Russian state media and official government accounts promoted positive messaging related to Russia’s coronavirus vaccines, while highlighting controversies and problems related to Western vaccines. While some of this content [...]
Nad’a Kovalčíková and Ariane Tabatabai: What Should Be Done Next to Counter the COVID-19 Infodemic?
As governments and citizens around the world have struggled with the novel coronavirus, the information space has turned into a battleground. Authoritarian countries, including Russia, China and Iran, have spread disinformation on the causes of and [...]
Nad’a Kovalčíková on the Coronavirus Infodemic: Using and Abusing Information Space
DROG interviewed Fellow and Program Manager Nad'a Kovalčíková about China's role in the coronavirus infodemic as part of its crash course on coronavirus disinformation. [...]
Hamilton Toplines: November 7-13, 2020
Last week’s U.S. election coverage from Russian state media continued to feature familiar themes, including claims of fraud, criticism of mainstream media coverage of the election, and condemnation of social media platforms for election-related issu [...]
Jessica Brandt and Bret Schafer for Brookings: How China’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomats Use and Abuse Twitter
A little more than a year ago, China had almost no diplomatic presence on Twitter. A handful of accounts, many representing far-flung diplomatic outposts, operated without apparent coordination or direction from Beijing. Today, the work of Chinese d [...]
Nad’a Kovalčíková Discusses Russian Disinformation during the Coronavirus Epidemic and Beyond in a Panel at Euractiv
Program Manager and Fellow Nad’a Kovalčíková joined a number of experts in a panel discussion on Russian disinformation during the coronavirus epidemic and beyond. An accompanying article can be found here. [...]
Hamilton Toplines: October 10-16, 2020
The New York Post’s publication of salacious and unverified personal materials from a laptop allegedly owned by Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was covered extensively by Russian state media, which focused both on the “explosive” contents of the story, as [...]
Hamilton Toplines: October 3-9, 2020
Last week, Russian and Iranian diplomatic and state media accounts and outlets primarily focused on regional issues, while Chinese accounts and outlets concentrated on U.S.-China disputes as well as President Trump’s coronavirus recovery. Russian st [...]