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.
Russia’s Affront on the News: How NewsFront’s Circumvention of Social Media Bans Demonstrates the Need for Vigilance
There has been a sizable public- and private-sector effort to rid the United States’ social media ecosystem of Kremlin disinformation since Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. But what happens to one of those Russian outlets when so [...]
Nad’a Kovalčíková Discusses Disinformation, Tech in Europe on RTVS
Program Manager and Fellow Nad’a Kovalčíková spoke to RTVS on the occasion of the Vice President European Commissioner Věra Jourová’s virtual visit to Slovakia. She commented on the Commission’s European Democracy Action Plan, other recent efforts t [...]
Iran’s Supreme Tweeter
Was Ayatollah Khamenei behind a now-banned Twitter account that threatened to assassinate former President Trump? Recently, Twitter permanently suspended an account—@Khamenei_site–following a tweet that was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled thr [...]
Hamilton Toplines: January 23-31, 2021
The Russian embassy in Mexico’s Twitter account received uncharacteristically high engagement last week after a January 25 phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during which they discu [...]
Q&A with Jamie Fly: What Do Russia’s Actions Against RFE/RL Mean for Media Freedom?
On January 27, a Russian court fined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and its Russian-language services for failing to comply with the country’s “foreign agent” law—with rulings on four more protocols expected in February and RFE/RL journali [...]
Hamilton Toplines: January 16-22, 2021
While the weekend’s protests against the detention of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny upon his return to Russia fell outside of the week monitored, his arrest was accompanied by official statements characterizing Navalny as a criminal, crit [...]
How Russia Divides America
In his new YouTube series Trust But Verify, Non-Resident Fellow Clint Watts looks at different parts of Russia's information manipulation operations and their impact on the United States. It’s now common knowledge that Russia has an interest in in [...]
Spies and Money: Legal Defenses Against Foreign Interference in Political Campaigns
Executive Summary In recent years, U.S. government officials have normalized a damaging notion: that soliciting or participating in foreign interference in a U.S. election will not be prosecuted. Foreign governments from Beijing to Moscow and else [...]
Censorship and the Capitol Riot: How Big Tech Became the Target of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian Messaging
Overview Since the riot at the U.S. capitol on January 6, there has been a clear element of schadenfreude in Iranian, Russian, and Chinese state media coverage of political and social disunion in the United States. That adversarial state media outle [...]
Hamilton Toplines: January 9-15, 2021
In response to tech platforms’ more aggressive content moderation in the wake of the capitol riots (including Facebook and Twitter banning President Trump), RT has drilled down on the narrative of censorship, with isolated examples from other Russia [...]
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 [...]