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.
Interference Matters
Inflaming Divides: Russian Narratives on the California Wildfires
Brussels Forum: Day 2 // Democracy at Home and Abroad
China is implementing a multifaceted pressure campaign against Taiwan aimed at undermining the confidence of the people of Taiwan in their democratically elected government and weakening their will to resist integration with China. Beijing’s toolkit [...]
Laura Thornton in The Catalyst: How Democracies Should Respond in a Post-Fact World
Russia’s war in Ukraine is a horrific enactment of the struggle between autocracy and democracy. As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy poignantly stated, “Russia fears our democracy more than we are proud of it.” Putin understands well that democracy spr [...]
Hamilton Toplines: June 13–19, 2022
Russia Russian officials and state media last week targeted the European Union as the bloc moved forward with plans to grant Ukraine candidate status. RIA Novosti paraphrased a Russian lawmaker saying that “Ukraine will not live to see EU membership [...]
Hamilton Monthly Report: May 2022
This report highlights and analyzes key trends and takeaways from data collected by the Hamilton 2.0 Dashboard during the previous month. Unlike ASD’s weekly Hamilton reports, which analyze the main topics and themes promoted by monitored Russian an [...]
China and the Digital Information Stack in the Global South
Introduction The 21st Century started with the promise of how technologies can be used to bolster, not undermine, democracies, activism, and human rights. However, the maddening pace at which digital technologies have evolved in recent years means [...]
Yandex Dashboard Analysis: It’s the Economy, Stupid
Top Headlines in Russia This week, we examined the headlines on Yandex that feature Russia as the primary country mentioned. Four of the top six key phrases in these articles relate to the economy, dwarfing coverage of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine [...]
Hamilton Toplines: June 6–12, 2022
Russia Russian officials and state-funded media last week continued their efforts to shift blame for a global food shortage caused by Moscow’s decision to invade Ukraine. Russian propagandists argued that the crisis was sparked by Western sanctions [...]
Q&A with ASD Experts: How Have January 6th and the Big Lie Impacted U.S. Democracy?
More than a year and a half after the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol will hold its first public hearing this Thursday. The televised series of hearings will f [...]
Hamilton Toplines: May 30–June 5, 2022
Russia Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday threatened that Russia would hit targets in Ukraine “that we have not yet attacked” if Kyiv receives long-range missiles from the United States. The warning capped a week of propaganda meant to deter [...]
How Russia’s Leading Search Engine Spreads Kremlin Propaganda on Ukraine: Introducing ASD’s Yandex Dashboard
Russia’s information environment has become increasingly constricted. Legislation banning the characterization of Russia’s war in Ukraine as anything but a “special military operation” is just one indication of the censorship and cherry-picking that [...]
Hamilton Toplines: May 23–29, 2022
Russia Kremlin-linked accounts continued to argue that Western sanctions weren’t impacting Russia’s economy but were driving inflation in the West and prompting a global food shortage. President Vladimir Putin said that the Russian economy was “resi [...]
Wall Street Journal Exclusive: China Excels in Google Rankings on Xinjiang and Covid-19 Searches
On issues critical to Beijing, including human rights and the origins of Covid-19, Chinese sources dominate top search results on Western search engines and platforms, including Google, Bing, and YouTube. By securing first-page search results on pop [...]