Authoritarian regimes and their proxies use social media, other online information platforms, and traditional media to attempt to shape global and domestic narratives; to sow chaos and confusion in democracies; and to undermine democratic processes. Find ASD’s work on the many ways malign actors manipulate information to interfere in democracies, including by spreading disinformation, on this page.
Voting in Beijing’s Shadow: The People’s Republic of China Interferes in the 2024 Taiwanese Elections
The recent Taiwanese elections provide important insights into the tools and tactics the People’s Republic of China (PRC) might use when election results matter to its leadership. Similarly, Taiwanese authorities’ vigilance and responsiveness to Bei [...]
How Kremlin narratives about Ukraine spread (or don’t) on U.S. political podcasts
Introduction In recent years, political podcasting has boomed in the United States, with new series emerging across the political spectrum. Due to the medium’s decentralized nature, it is difficult to grasp the total audience for these shows, but [...]
Meta Report Highlights Lack of Cross-Platform Coordination on Information Operations
Meta’s recent report on the company’s takedown of a Chinese government information campaign that was the “largest cross-platform operation” ever, and of several smaller influence campaigns that originated in Turkey, Iran, and Russia, named hundreds [...]
5 Takeaways from the War in Ukraine: Military Bloggers Dashboard
Over the course of the war in Ukraine, a loose network of Russian military bloggers on Telegram have provided a fervently nationalistic, though at times highly critical, view of Russia’s “special military operation”. Providing more unfiltered covera [...]
Russian State Media Is Not Rushing to Threads Despite Platform’s Lax Regulations
Meta’s Twitter-alternative, Threads, became the fastest app to reach 100 million users. It took five days. The app itself only took seven months to build, a remarkably short start-to-launch period that did not allow the few dozen engineers working o [...]
Peter Benzoni and Bret Schafer on Navigating the Age of Disinformation
In this episode of "Disinformation," ASD's Bret Schafer and Peter Benzoni discuss ASD's tools and the rise of disinformation online. [...]
Lindsay Gorman Explains How to Spot AI-Generated Images on Face the Nation
Lindsay Gorman, a technology expert at the German Marshall Fund, discusses on "Face the Nation" how to differentiate AI-generated images online from real ones. "Context is a really important piece of this," she noted. [...]
Russia Floods Twitter with Propaganda about the Kakhovka Dam’s Collapse
Overview In the early hours of June 6, an explosion collapsed the Kakhovka dam, releasing a torrent of water across the Ukrainian countryside and igniting a blame game across social media. Evidence collected by the New York Times indicates that Russ [...]
ASD Data on Russian Propaganda on Dam Collapse Covered Exclusively in The Record
Russian officials and diplomats have been coordinating an unusually organized and large-scale disinformation campaign to discredit reports that the nation is responsible for the June 6 collapse of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, according to a new study. Disi [...]
Turkey’s Election: Mostly Free, Anything but Fair
Elections in Turkey had high turn-out, meaningful results, and little violence, but that doesn’t mean they were free from autocratic manipulation on the part of the regime. On Sunday, Turkish voters went to the polls in a mostly free but highly unf [...]
The Tweet Is Coming from Inside the House
In Erdoğan’s Turkey, anti-government trolls get arrested, while pro-government trolls get paychecks. Social media has become a major source of information for Turkish people, thanks in large part to the Turkish government’s strict control of tradit [...]
Lindsay Gorman Testifies Before Australian Parliament about China’s Influence Operations
Below is an unedited transcript of the proceedings provided by the Australian Parliament. Read the full transcript here. GORMAN, Ms Lindsay, Senior Fellow for Emerging Technologies and Head, Technology and Geopolitics Team, Alliance for Securing De [...]