Russia employs a sophisticated social media campaign against former Soviet states that includes news tweets, nonattributed comments on web pages, troll and bot social media accounts, and fake hashtag and Twitter campaigns. Nowhere is this threat more tangible than in Ukraine. Researchers analyzed social media data and conducted interviews with regional and security experts to understand the critical ingredients to countering this campaign.
The Russian government's campaigns of disinformation--political, social, religious, or otherwise--have found a comfortable home on social media. This report presents strategies to counter Russian social media influence.
This book furthers our understanding of the practice of propaganda with a specific focus on the RussiaGate case. RussiaGate is a discourse about alleged Russian "meddling" in US elections, and this book argues that it functions as disinformation or distraction. The book provides a framework for better understanding of ongoing developments of RussiaGate, linking these to macroconsiderations that rarely enter mainstream accounts. It demonstrates the considerable weaknesses of many of the charges that have been made against Russia by US investigators, and argues that this discourse fails to take account of broader non-transparent persuasion campaigns operating in the election-information environment that are strengthened by social media manipulation. RussiaGate has obscured many of the factors that challenge the integrity of democratic process in the USA. These deserve a much higher priority than any influence that Russia may want to exert. The book concludes that RussiaGate discourse needs to be contextualized with reference to a long-established broader competition between great powers for domination of EurAsia. This pitches the US/European Union against Russia/China and perhaps, ultimately, even the USA against Europe. This book will be of much interest to students of media and communication studies, propaganda studies, US politics, Russian politics, and International Relations in general.
This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies. It covers the motivation and scope of Moscow's intentions regarding US elections and Moscow's use of cyber tools and media campaigns to influence US public opinion. The assessment focuses on activities aimed at the 2016 US presidential election and draws on our understanding of previous Russian influence operations. When we use the term "we" it refers to an assessment by all three agencies. * This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment. This document's conclusions are identical to the highly classified assessment, but this document does not include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence on key elements of the influence campaign. Given the redactions, we made minor edits purely for readability and flow. We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion. * New information continues to emerge, providing increased insight into Russian activities. * PHOTOS REMOVED
A nuanced and comprehensive study of the political dynamics between Russia and key countries in Southeast Europe Is Russia threatening to disrupt more than two decades' of E.U. and U.S. efforts to promote stability in post-communist Southeast Europe? Politicians and commentators in the West say, "yes." With rising global anxiety over Russia's political policies and objectives, Dimitar Bechev provides the only in-depth look at this volatile region. Deftly unpacking the nature and extent of Russian influence in the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey, Bechev argues that both sides are driven by pragmatism and opportunism rather than historical loyalties. Russia is seeking to assert its role in Europe's security architecture, establish alternative routes for its gas exports--including the contested Southern Gas Corridor--and score points against the West. Yet, leaders in these areas are allowing Russia to reinsert itself to serve their own goals. This urgently needed guide analyzes the responses of regional NATO members, particularly regarding the annexation of Crimea and the Putin-Erdogan rift over Syria.
Russia, under both the Soviets and Vladimir Putin, is in a struggle with Western civilization, and has conducted influence campaigns to weaken and undermine the West from within. This study of influence campaigns waged against the West by the Soviet Union and now by Russia under President Vladimir Putin is intended to present a detailed overview and analysis of the various influence campaigns. Methods and means employed by the Soviet Union included active measures, disinformation, propaganda, controlled international front groups, agents of influence, forgeries, and reflexive control. Campaign themes are examined, and two key campaigns against NATO deployment of the neutron bomb and intermediate-range nuclear force are analyzed as case studies of a successful and failed campaign. The influence campaigns waged by President Putin against the West combine time tested methods with new information age techniques not available during the Soviet era including internet trolls, social media, information warfare, and cyber operations. Both similarities and differences exist in the execution and objectives of influence campaigns conducted by the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia. While the ideologies differ, both Soviet Communist ideology as well as the new Russian nationalist ideology under President Putin contend that Russia is engaged in a long-term struggle with the West that continues during peace and conflict, and will likely end violently. President Putin's Russia is now employing asymmetrical warfare against former Soviet republics to intimidate as well as expand Russian influence and borders in order to create a Russian World. This so-called new generation or hybrid warfare, essentially a Russian version of a "color revolution," incorporates aspects of influence campaigns combined with the covert deployment of special forces to mobilize local ethnic Russian populations combined with cyber operations to disrupt an opponent, and prepare the battle and information space for possible military operations. Influence campaigns in the Soviet era and under President Putin represent an indirect, low risk approach to undermine and weaken an opponent from within in order to promote political objectives, and alter the correlation of power in Moscow's favor in order to win the clash of civilizations with the West. The West needs to develop a coordinated response to the information assault by the Kremlin. First and foremost, the West needs to recognize that they are engaged in a struggle with President Putin's Russia. An effort similar to that developed to identify, analyze and publicize Soviet active measures and disinformation campaigns needs to be established. Countering the Kremlin's influence campaigns is important, however, the West critically needs to conduct proactive, offensive influence campaigns against Russian efforts. A three tier Western influence campaign is required. Information campaigns need to counter Russian influence efforts in the West and actively promote Western policies to public audiences. Next, a strategic communications campaign is required for audiences in the former Soviet republics, in particular Russian speaking populations. These countries are critical as they are already under assault by the Kremlin's influence campaigns, and are potentially the next target of Moscow's asymmetrical new generation warfare. The final audience, the Russian public, represents the hardest target, but also the most critical in countering the new Russian World ideology. Detailed target audience analysis is required for this effort to identify key groups and developed highly specialized and effective messaging. While difficult, analysis to anticipate future Russian influence campaigns and actions is required to more effectively counter the Kremlin's strategy. NATO and friendly states must centralize and pool scarce resources to counter the Kremlin's actions and communicate a Western message to key target audiences.
Social media platforms do not just circulate political ideas, they support manipulative disinformation campaigns. While some of these disinformation campaigns are carried out directly by individuals, most are waged by software, commonly known as bots, programmed to perform simple, repetitive, robotic tasks. Some social media bots collect and distribute legitimate information, while others communicate with and harass people, manipulate trending algorithms, and inundate systems with spam. Campaigns made up of bots, fake accounts, and trolls can be coordinated by one person, or a small group of people, to give the illusion of large-scale consensus. Some political regimes use political bots to silence opponents and to push official state messaging, to sway the vote during elections, and to defame critics, human rights defenders, civil society groups, and journalists. This book argues that such automation and platform manipulation, amounts to a new political communications mechanism that Samuel Woolley and Philip N. Noward call "computational propaganda." This differs from older styles of propaganda in that it uses algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully distribute misleading information over social media networks while it actively learns from and mimicks real people so as to manipulate public opinion across a diverse range of platforms and device networks. This book includes cases of computational propaganda from nine countries (both democratic and authoritarian) and four continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia), covering propaganda efforts over a wide array of social media platforms and usage in different types of political processes (elections, referenda, and during political crises).
Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia, who flood social media with disinformation, and circulate false and misleading information to fuel fake narratives and make the case for illegal warfare. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, including Ukraine and Poland, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.
Russia has cultivated an opaque web of economic and political patronage across the Central and Eastern European region that the Kremlin uses to influence and direct decisionmaking. This report from the CSIS Europe Program, in partnership with the Bulgarian Center for the Study of Democracy, is the result of a 16-month study on the nature of Russian influence in five case countries: Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Serbia.
This book examines Russian influence operations globally, in Europe, and in Russia’s neighboring countries, and provides a comprehensive overview of the latest technologies and forms of strategic communication employed in hybrid warfare. Given the growing importance of comprehensive information warfare as a new and rapidly advancing type of international conflict in which knowledge is a primary target, the book examines Russia’s role in Global Knowledge Warfare. The content is divided into three parts, the first of which addresses conceptual issues such as the logic of information warfare, the role of synthetic media, and Russia’s foreign policy concepts, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on influence operations. The second part analyzes technological, legal and strategic challenges in modern hybrid warfare, while the third focuses on textual, cultural and historical patterns in information warfare, also from various regional (e.g. the Western Balkans, Romania, Ukraine, and the Baltic) perspectives. The book is primarily intended for scholars in the fields of international relations, security and the military sciences who are interested in Russian foreign policy and influence operations, but also their impact on the global security environment.
