"Wie denken gewöhnliche Russ:innen wirklich über die Entscheidung von Präsident Putin, in die Ukraine einzumarschieren? Obwohl einiges dafürspricht, dass frühere Umfragen, die Zustimmungswerte um 60 % für den Krieg zeigen, als genuine Signale der russischen öffentlichen Meinung gewertet werde
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n können, untersucht dieser Beitrag eine Reihe von Gründen, warum diese Umfrageergebnisse mit großer Vorsicht behandelt oder gar ignoriert werden sollten. Gründe dafür sind u. a. die staatliche Zensur, die Selbstzensur der Bevölkerung und eine verzerrte Beantwortung der Fragen, das Vorhandensein von Protesten sogar in einem autoritären Umfeld in Russland, als auch die Tatsache, dass einige der früheren Umfragen nach einem hypothetischen Einmarsch fragten, über den viele Russ:innen wohl nicht ausreichend nachgedacht haben könnten. Allerdings führt der Beitrag an, dass die plausibelste Erklärung für den offensichtlichen anfänglichen Rückhalt für den Krieg in der Manipulation der öffentlichen Meinung durch staatliche Kontrolle der Kommunikationskanäle und der weitverbreitete Einsatz von Zensur, Propaganda und Desinformation im eigenen Land als auch im Ausland liegt." (Seite 6)
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"The research – based on programmatic text-mining supported analyses of several millions of war-related comments scraped by Sentione and further examined with CrowdTangle - found traces of inauthentic, repetitive pro-Kremlin activity on Facebook in all countries under review, which can be consider
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ed attempts to influence public opinion in the affected states and, in some cases, beyond them. Our main conclusions are: Crises help the Kremlin. Even if public opinion in the EU is currently unfavorable to the Kremlin, the onset of high, permanent inflation, soaring energy prices and the looming danger of an EU-wide recession could create a more favorable environment for the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts. Most (covertly) Kremlin-friendly forces will adopt a rhetoric blasting sanctions for harming Europe more than Russia. Importing disinformation narratives. Three out of the four narratives found in Hungary were imported into the country from abroad. One doubting Ukraine’s existence as a country started from an organization connected to Ukrainian pro-Putin oligarch Viktor Medvechuk, taken over by the so-called “news agency” of separatists. Another narrative detailing a new, dictatorial world order based on, among others, COVID-19 restrictions, and led by NATO was aimed at developing countries where Russia can hope to hold more sway. The third essentially took over a trend in the Russian media space: users tried to discredit anti-war voices by asking them “where they were in the past eight years” when Ukraine committed atrocities against minorities. Strategies in Germany: Divide and Rule. The six relevant narratives we found in Germany employed three different strategies. The first was anti-Westernism, where the US and NATO are to blame for Russia’s attack. The second aimed clearly at generating debates by spreading a Kremlin-critical narrative. Some profiles involved in this were caught disseminating both pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin narratives, which indicates it is not intended to counter the Kremlin’s information operation but to be a part of it. The third strategy was about exploiting contemporary events - such as heightened discussions on sanctions and rising inflation." (Executive summary)
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"This paper offers a critical overview of anti-war propaganda in the Russian language during the first six months of the war and identifies the reasons for its limited success. After a review of the challenges to current forms of propaganda, the paper offers practical recommendations to improve the
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work in this area." (Page 3)
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"More than nine months into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the online methods for tracking this war are many and proliferating, including the most obvious source of all — social media networks. A 2019 law designed to keep its military from posting on social media has not deterred Russian service
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men from sharing images and updates from the frontline, not least on Telegram and the Russian social network VKontakte, potentially allowing anyone with an Internet connection to pinpoint the place, time, and sometimes individuals seen in footage of military movements. Open-source investigations (OSI), popularly and misleadingly known as open-source intelligence, is not synonymous with social media, however. OSI is any information that can be publicly accessed by others, including but not limited to online sources. That includes everything from local newspapers to satellite imagery and images shared on TripAdvisor. What it doesn’t include are two mainstays of traditional investigative journalism — non-public document leaks or closed-source reporting, otherwise known as shoe-leather reporting and interviews. Over the past few years, newsrooms have started integrating open-source methods into their coverage and building their own OSI teams. That’s in part to verify social media posts, and in part to report on places where it is simply too dangerous for journalists to venture — areas on or behind the frontlines — where open-source imagery allows a glimpse into military movements and potential war crimes. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, open-source investigations have surged in prominence and the genre as a whole has attracted scrutiny, not least from state actors themselves." (Introduction)
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"Eight months into the Russia-Ukraine war, Roma refugees in Moldova, continue to face significant barriers to accessing the information necessary to make decisions for themselves and their families and to access humanitarian services. This assessment shows that some barriers are well documented and
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have impacted their access to timely, verified, and actionable information long before their arrival in Moldova. These include a deeply ingrained distrust of authority figures (in particular, the government), poor access to education, and lower literacy skills than other refugee groups. Other barriers are more recent, resulting from the new structural inequities they are facing in Moldova." (Executive summary)
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"The war in Ukraine is just the latest instance where attention-grabbing events have fuelled the rapid spread of false or misleading news about refugees and migrants. This Issue Paper examines the challenges posed by disinformation about refugees from Ukraine, as well as the responses taken so far t
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o address it. It inspects which disinformation actors spread false claims about Ukrainian refugees, and how. It sheds light on why migration-related disinformation is so pervasive and how disinformation narratives change over time and space. It also examines which audiences are more susceptible to online disinformation. The paper also identifies positive developments and shortcomings in the EU's responses." (Executive Summary, page 5)
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"The purpose of this study is to assess the threats and supporting mechanisms present in the Georgian media environment in 2022. Observation of the media environment, similar to the previous year’s research, was based on the evaluation of the participants involved in the research and further compa
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rative analysis." (Abstract)
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"In this essay, I explore the nature of propaganda in a hybrid media environment through the example of Russian propaganda during the ongoing war in Ukraine. I start by briefly overviewing the Russian media system’s development, focusing on the roots of cynical attitude toward journalism in the so
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ciety. After analyzing propaganda strategies, I suggest the propaganda on demand concept, which describes the manipulation of public opinion by targeting different social milieus with specif-ically tailored narratives. In Russia’s case, this approach is based on inconsistency and eclecticism. However, it seems well suited to the very logic of the digital realm, which helps the state deliver often-contradicting narratives to different target groups." (Abstract)
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"The purpose of this research is two-fold: first, to assess the effectiveness of the restrictions placed on Russian state-affiliated media by the European Union after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; second, to unearth potential circumvention methods and their success in enabling pro-Kr
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emlin content to reach European audiences. This report breaks down into two parts: firstly, an analysis of traffic from global and European audiences to all RT websites, as well as websites associated with Rossiya Segodnya, a media group affiliated with the Kremlin that operates various outlets, including Sputnik. For this, analysts conducted website forensics and collected website traffic data to identify all RT and Rossiya Segodnya domains and to understand who is still accessing their content and how. The second study explored how RT articles that negatively depict Ukrainians seeking refuge in Europe and elsewhere were made available through various means across the EU." (About this publication)
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"The Russia-Ukraine war’s ramifications for Vietnam are felt beyond the economic and diplomatic realms. It has in fact become an online hotbed of conflicting and confounding narratives that demonstrate different worldviews and political leanings among Vietnamese netizens. An examination of 28 Face
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book pages/groups active in trending pro-Russia narratives finds an ‘echo chamber’ that is on a constant lookout for Russian, Western and even Chinese news sources that peddle and amplify pro-Russia and anti-Western voices. The most salient pro-Russia narratives in Vietnam’s cyberspace revolve around justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, echoing anti-America and anti-imperialist worldviews, and lionising Russia while demonising Ukraine. These online groups have likely carved out a niche for the conservative segment of the Vietnamese state to shape a propaganda environment where there is space for pro-Russia and anti-Russia narratives, so that pro-Ukraine sentiments will not become predominant in the public discourse. Pro-Russia narratives in Vietnam’s cyberspace are the result of cross-pollination between sentimental attachment since the Soviet era, psychological bias towards Russia embedded in Vietnam’s education and propaganda system, and the overriding imperative to preserve the Vietnamese state’s political and ideological interests." (Executive summary)
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"We sought to better understand Russia's disinformation on social media and generate recommendations to better meet and counter this evolving threat. We relied on an analysis of Russian military literature, investigative efforts, official reports, academic and policy literature, media reporting, and
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expert interviews. We also conducted a case study in Ukraine, interviewing a variety of key experts in the Ukrainian government and in the nongovernmental sector who are involved in confronting Russian information warfare." (Summary)
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"This paper will outline the technologies and mechanisms of Putin's information machine, how it operates during the war and the obstacles to anti-war propaganda among Russians. At the very end, we will offer some recommendations for confronting Putin's information machine at war, both of a general n
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ature and relating to specific groups of Russian society." (Page 3)
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"Reported here are findings from a study of the frequency and content of messaging on various themes on Russian television. The goal of this approach is not necessarily to re-create Russians' viewing habits, though one might reasonably assume that more frequently mentioned topics are more likely to
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have been viewed or noticed. Rather, the frequency and distribution of topics over time reveal the extent to which state-controlled television presented a coordinated campaign. In the absence of reliable public opinion data in war-time Russia, such an approach further suggests insights about the ways that Russians were prepared for and reacted to the onset of war. Despite Russia's insistence that its invasion was motivated by longstanding concerns-genocide and fascism in Ukraine-the findings show that Russian television only paid brief attention to those concerns and quickly re-focused on other themes. Rather, the priming of the public for war began over a month prior to the invasion with the spread of "war talk" on television broadcasts." (Page 1)
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"En tanto ideología presente en medios, intelectuales y élites políticas de Rusia y Latinoamérica, las narrativas iliberales -proyectadas por medios y academias afines- gozan de apreciable presencia e impacto en el panorama regional. A raíz del conflicto entre Rusia y Occidente por la invasión
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a Ucrania, el rol de los medios rusos como fuente de desinformación de la población latinoamericana ha sido objeto de atención. La presencia de estos medios masivos permite al Kremlin cuestionar el modelo democrático vigente en la mayor parte de América Latina y defender las posturas oficiales del gobierno ruso, al tiempo que se alinean con las perspectivas de las fuerzas iliberales - en especial de la izquierda radical - del espectro político regional." (Resumen)
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"During the monitoring period (February 24 – April 24) the following tendencies have been identified: Out of the 160 false information and manipulative content, mainly disseminated in Russian and Georgian sources, the largest share (49.4%) was directed against Ukraine, followed by disinformation a
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gainst the West (28.1%). Part of the false and manipulative content was aimed at justifying Russia’s actions (16.3%). In order to evade Russia’s responsibility for human casualties, the Kremlin’s propaganda has resorted to the tactic of “whataboutism” – in response to accusations, the Russian side has been arguing that the Ukrainian side was the one killing the civilian population and that the population was endangered not by Russian troops but by the actions of the Azov Battalion and other so-called ‘Nazi groups.’ The denial of Russian responsibility for the military intervention in Ukraine was also bolstered by deliberate disinformation, reinforcing the idea that Ukraine was fabricating information about the victims (Mariupol blogger story, Bucha Massacre). Visual manipulations, including those related to the pandemic, were often used for this purpose [...]" (Key findings)
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"The aim of this research was to study media consumption habits among different age groups and geographical areas, as well as the public's vulnerability to various disinformation and manipulative narratives disseminated in Georgia. The first part of the research concerns media literacy competencies,
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namely media consumption habits, the ability to identify and verify false information, while the second part deals with perceptions of disinformation in relation to 3 thematic areas (Russian intervention in Ukraine, current events/ identity-related issues in Georgia and health). The research was conducted in 7 Georgian cities throughout the month of September, namely Akhalkalaki, Batumi, Gardabani, Zugdidi, Tbilisi, Telavi, and Kutaisi, conducting face-to-face interviews with 140 respondents." (Introduction, page 3)
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"In late February 2022, Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine which sent shockwaves around the world. As the world responded with sanctions against Russia, Moscow increased its public relations campaign to justify its invasion and recast the narrative in the media and on the inter
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net. The Malaysian government’s initial responses were mixed, with the Prime Minister refraining from naming Russia as the aggressor but ultimately voting to support the UN resolution to condemn the invasion. Malaysian social media were abuzz with discussions on the conflict, with different groups articulating both condemnation and support for Russia. The research in this paper, using digital ethnography, examines pro-Russian sentiments and unpacks them for possible explanations for why such views prevail amongst Malaysians. Four key themes emerged from our analysis. These were: perceived Islamist solidarity, pervasive animosity towards Western hegemony, preference for neutrality and pacifism, and the delegitimization of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy." (Executive Summary)
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"Although China's official position on the war has been that of neutrality-not aligning with the West against Russia and not directly supporting Russia's war in Ukraine-its communications about the war, in particular its propaganda via state media and Foreign Ministry spokespeople have carried a mor
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e pro-Russia stance. During the past two months of the Russia-Ukraine war, Chinese official messaging has echoed and reinforced Russia's position: 1.) by promoting shared narratives about the origins and culprits of the war, namely blaming NATO and the United States; 2.) by drawing disproportionally on Russian sources and footage of the war; and 3.) by under-reporting on Ukraine's perspectives. This pro-Russia leaning during the Ukraine crisis can be understood as part of a larger propaganda trajectory vis-à-vis Russia and the United States. Domestically, China's propaganda messaging in large part appears to resonate with public opinion. Internationally, however, Chinese propaganda about the war, especially communications by Foreign Ministry spokespeople, delude China's neutrality position and antagonize the West, while more integrating China into the Global South." (Page 1)
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"Der Journalist und Verleger Sergej Parkhomenko ist ein international gefeierter Menschenrechtsverteidiger, Oppositionsaktivist und unter den russischen Medienschaffenden einer der wichtigsten Partner für das Internationale Journalisten- und Mediendialogprogramm (IJMD) der Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftun
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g für die Freiheit . Als entschiedener Gegner der russischen Invasion in der Ukraine setzt er von Europa aus seine Arbeit gegen den russischen Eroberungskrieg und wider die Putin-Diktatur fort. Im Impulspapier berichtet Parkhomenko über den Überlebenskampf des unabhängigen Journalismus unter den totalitären Repressionsmaßnahmen in Russland." (https://shop.freiheit.org)
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"The topic of the war in Ukraine dominated the media during the first three months of the war and completely marginalized all other topics. The most foreign actor reported on most in the media was Russia, while the countries of the West, the US, the EU, and NATO were far less noticeable. Although th
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e initial open support for Russia has softened since the beginning of the war, the media continue to report in favour of Russia, and against the West. Television stations with national coverage (especially their morning news programmes), as well as parts of the daily press, are at the forefront of supporting Russia. Internet portals have a more balanced approach. Among state officials, President Vucic has monopolized the discussions of the war in Ukraine, and he is the person most credited in the media for establishing Serbia's neutral stance on this issue. Disinformation in the media is placed in such a way as to present Russia in a positive light, and the West negatively. Disinformation was most prevalent on internet portals and the printed edition of Vecernje novosti, the daily Informer, and television stations Pink and Happy." (Key findings)
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