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The authors find support for the hypothesis that SputnikTR used strategic communication to market Russia's COVID vaccine to the public. The medium also advanced pro-Russian, anti-Western themes. The study examined Russian influence operations targeting Turkey, specifically by examining the messaging of the Twitter account for SputnikTR, Sputnik News' localized branch operating in Turkey and the largest pro-Russian media outlet in that country. In particular, the authors were interested in how Russian propaganda targeted Turkish audiences through the context of COVID-19 vaccinations and how the Russian-made vaccine was promoted to Turkish audiences occurring within the backdrop of the ongoing Russian-Turkish rapprochement. Looking at over 2,700 tweets from SputnikTR about vaccines, the authors found that the account strategically promoted two themes: international popularity of the Russian vaccine and scientific integrity of the Russian vaccine. The latter theme had frequent references to the West trying to discredit Russian vaccine. SputnikTR's approach included unethical practices to increase engagement with tweets linking to vaccine-related content. This practice, known as 'salami slicing,' involves posting multiple tweets linking to the same article but using different imagery and tweet content to make it appear as though each tweet is unique and not simply a link back to the same article. Tweets also amplified endorsements for Russia's vaccine from political leaders around the world as a means of increasing the perceived popularity of the vaccine.

This article supports the hypothesis that Russian information warfare leverages a number of narratives and subnarratives regarding the Norwegian children's social welfare system (NCWS) to portray Western European states as morally rotten and deviating from traditional Christian values, demonstrating this through analysis of content in so-called disinformation media in the Czech Republic from 2014 to 2017. Through content analysis employing open and axial sociological coding, beginning with two working narratives and identifying a third during the analysis process, it classifies Russian information warfare in the Czech Republic as belonging to one of three narrative categories, each of which has sub-categories: first, narratives of the NCWS as fascist/Nazi; second, narratives of Norwegian twisted sexuality and moral decay; and, third, neo-Marxist policy narratives applies to the NCWS. The authors also identified narrative bridging between attributes of the different narratives and sub-narratives.

The study finds support for the first hypothesis that IRA accounts are more likely to be associated with black propaganda or disguised sources within the enemy population than other types of propaganda (gray or unidentifiable sources and white or identifiable sources). Black propaganda accounts had a higher number of followers and average number of messages posted compared with gray and white accounts. There is also support for the second hypothesis that IRA efforts to spread falsehoods and conspiracy theories are segmented across propaganda type. Specifically, gray propaganda scored consistently higher than black and white for fear mongering, populism sentiments, and hostility. The IRA seems to favor accounts with unidentifiable location and whose affiliation is concealed to disseminate fear mongering, populist appeals, and hostile political platforms, including scapegoating and call for action against threats to society. There is also support for the third hypothesis, specifically that the IRA propaganda on social media promotes agitation, emotional responses, direct behavior, polarization, and support for rumors and conspiracy theories by strategically deploying black, gray, or white propaganda. Here, the study shows that black propaganda accounts show higher scores for each of the above variables. Overall, the results from hypotheses two and three show that dissemination of fear mongering stories, stoking populism sentiments, and encouraging hostile expression is more likely associated with gray propaganda. Black propaganda, on the contrary, is central to sowing social discord in the target population. These two classes of propaganda were used to stoke fears in the public and they contrast with self-identified (white propaganda) Russian accounts that tweet mostly pro-Kremlin content. Lastly, the study shows support for the fourth hypothesis, indicating that propaganda type is predictive of strategic target of IRA campaigns. The study identified five broad campaign targets: Russian citizens, Brexit (including mainstream media coverage and support to the Brexit campaign), conservative patriots (including Republican content), protest activism (including Black Lives Matter, Anti-Trump, and Anti-Hillary communication), and local news, whose accounts post and retweet mainstream media sources. It found that gray propaganda was dedicated to local news and the Brexit campaign, black propaganda deployed across campaign targets, and white propaganda covered Russian and Ukrainian issues almost exclusively.

The study finds support for the first hypothesis that IRA accounts are more likely to be associated with black propaganda or disguised sources within the enemy population than other types of propaganda (gray or unidentifiable sources and white or identifiable sources). Black propaganda accounts had a higher number of followers, followers, and average number of messages posted compared with gray and white accounts. There is also support for the second hypothesis that IRA efforts to spread falsehoods and conspiracy theories are segmented across propaganda type. Specifically, gray propaganda scored consistently higher than black and white for fear mongering, populism sentiments, and hostility. The IRA seems to favor accounts with unidentifiable location and whose affiliation is concealed to disseminate fear mongering, populist appeals, and hostile political platforms, including scapegoating and call for action against threats to society. There is also support for the third hypothesis, specifically that the IRA propaganda on social media promotes agitation, emotional responses, direct behavior, polarization, and support for rumors and conspiracy theories by strategically deploying black, gray, or white propaganda. Here, the study shows that black propaganda accounts show higher scores for each of the above variables. Overall, the results from hypotheses two and three show that dissemination of fear mongering stories, stoking populism sentiments, and encouraging hostile expression is more likely associated with gray propaganda. Black propaganda, on the contrary, is central to sowing social discord in the target population. These two classes of propaganda were used to stoke fears in the public and they contrast with self-identified (white propaganda) Russian accounts that tweet mostly pro-Kremlin content. Lastly, the study shows support for the fourth hypothesis, indicating that propaganda type is predictive of strategic target of IRA campaigns. The study identified five broad campaign targets: Russian citizens, Brexit (including mainstream media coverage and support to the Brexit campaign), conservative patriots (including Republican content), protest activism (including Black Lives Matter, Anti-Trump, and Anti-Hillary communication), and local news, whose accounts post and retweet mainstream media sources. It found that gray propaganda was dedicated to local news and the Brexit campaign, black propaganda deployed across campaign targets, and white propaganda covered Russian and Ukrainian issues almost exclusively.

This article examines the Latvian documentary, "The Soviet Story," as a militant Baltic memory project which seeks to establish the parity of East and West European experiences with totalitarian crimes in the pan-European memory narrative of twentieth-century wars and genocide. Such efforts include claiming the inner similarity and moral equitability of Soviet communism and German National Socialism. The article investigates The Soviet Story as an example of the cultural front in the Baltic-Russian "memory war" over remembering the Soviet legacy, reading the film's message in the context of the broader East European politics of seeking pan-European condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes. The film was sponsored by conservative European parliamentarians and the city council of the Latvian capital, Riga, and was premiered in European Parliament in 2008, with an aim of exerting pressure on the representatives to condemn the criminal legacy of the communist regimes in Europe. The article details how states like Latvia and Estonia have tried to get the EU to recognize denial of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes as on par with denial of the Holocaust by using this film as evidence. The film however, according to the author, does not meet the criteria of critical history, makes sweeping generalizations about Western public opinion, and lacks the nuance required to credibly criticize the Soviet practice of communism.

This paper advances a whole of society intelligence approach based on a reevaluation of the definition of intelligence practices in the 21st century. It argues that a whole of society intelligence approach is needed in the 21st century, in which intelligence skills and practices in detecting, fact checking, and corroborating information, etc., will have to be built through education and translated to wider networks of knowledge across civil society. In trying to redefine critical intelligence practices, the authors focus on the cognitive processes pursued by the intelligence functions and applied to propaganda and disinformation, and, even more specifically, on how these cognitive processes and their attached social practices can be modeled through interaction into a whole of society framework, able to generate societal resilience to these significant threats. The rapid advance of digital technologies and communications highlights the weaknesses in our current institutional systems tasked with gathering intelligence. Because of this, they need to be de-reified and intelligence must be approached through multiple competing lenses. For example, advanced technologies could process large datasets in conjunction with sociological, psychological, and cultural analysis to understand the core drivers of disinformation. As this example suggests, the authors posit that a whole of society intelligence approach inclusive of various systems-level actors is needed to produce resilient citizens. societies at large need to embrace a broad range of knowledge generation processes, understand potential sources of risk and apply this understanding to enhance domestic and global security. This is difficult when institutions are reticent to cross over into policymaking and due to the shift in "mind-frame" it requires of citizens. The model proposed focuses on knowledge sharing, information integrity, the information ecosystem, and positive community policing. The article provides a figure outlining the model, a list of knowledge-oriented activities for countering disinformation, and a table detailing types of in-place initiatives set up by civil society and transnational organizations to combat fake news, as well as examples and/or illustrations of these initiative types.

The piece examined how Russian IRA accounts inserted themselves into the discourse surrounding the BlackLivesMatter movement and police shootings in 2016. The authors found that IRA accounts positioned themselves along the fault line created in the wake of police shootings and BLM protests, creating personas that exploited both pro- and anti-BLM sentiment. Network analysis clearly showed that the accounts were embedded in both clusters, that is the content was retweeted on both sides of the conversation to appeal to these two different audiences. These troll accounts took steps to make themselves look authentic, including interacting with each other and legitimate Twitter users to create trust to allow their narrative to infiltrate further into legitimate discussions. The authors find that there were systematic patterns to the forged profiles. The establishment of 'the proud African American' as a political identity, on the one hand, and the articulation of 'the proud White Conservative', on the other as well as invoking stereotypical thinking and using organizational accounts that presented themselves as alternative media sources. The accounts used identity, linguistic and cultural markers that resonated with the two communities. For example, accounts in the right-leaning cluster used photographs to present themselves as white men and women living in Texas or other southern states who were interested in firearms. They also used antagonistic narratives targeting the other cluster to connect to existing discontent and then amplify it. Finally, these accounts criticized the traditional media and in doing so aimed to undermine trust in the media. The authors argue that the way in which Russian troll accounts have infiltrated the two distinct communities suggests that they were enacting harsh caricatures of political partisans that may have pulled likeminded accounts closer and push accounts from the other side even further away. This suggest support for the hypothesis that Russia's use of troll accounts has played a role in promoting division.

The authors find support for the idea that backing and bridging tactics used by bots can impact beliefs in disinformation. Specifically, they present twitter_sim, an agent-based model for exploring backing or following and retweeting influencers to amplify their message and bridging or building links between two communities to introduce the idea of one to another on increasing beliefs in disinformation on Twitter. Unlike most other ABM approaches, twitter_sim allows agents the ability to tweet, retweet, follow, like, etc. to more accurately model how trolls/bots behave on Twitter, along with mimicking the network characteristics common on the platform. The model focuses on the interactions between bots, normal users, and truth seekers and takes into account limited attention of users in the form of reading only a few tweets as well as similarity between people (homophily) and exposure to global conversations on Twitter that users can gain access to during searches. The authors show that truth tellers are able to maintain a downward trend on belief in disinformation until the percentage of bots that are backing exceeds 12 percent. At a bot presence of 12 percent, the battle for belief is generally at a stalemate, and at bot presence greater than 12 percent the bot campaign begins to build increasing belief in disinformation. There is no substantial difference in impact between bots that are amplifying the messages of influencers or those engaging in random backing. When it comes to bridging, the authors find that it can occur simply by pointing bots that are programmed to back at multiple communities. When bridging does bring the two communities together, the truth tellers that are present in the target community are not able to prevent increasing belief in the disinformation.

The study finds support for the idea that Russia's reporting of BLM and other social movements in the MENA region on state-sponsored RT3 (Arabic language broadcasts) was related to advancing Russia's geopolitical interests in the MENA region that would limit the spread of pro-democracy movements. This coverage bolstered narratives of securitization, nationalism, and anti-Islamism in the MENA while demonizing pro democracy movements and pushing back against the perceived meddling of the U.S. government, Silicon Valley, and multinational nongovernmental organizations like George Soro's Open Society Foundation. In Libya, for example, pro-Russian media amplified its focus on Hifter who led the Libyan National Army with a rhetoric depicting LNA as supporter of law and order and opposing the UN-backed government. RT3 also used mistranslation such as amplification of divisive language and source laundering or a method of channeling strategic narratives through alternative sources in its reporting. When BLM protests escalated across the country, RT3 captured the moment to project a narrative of chaos, but used carefully selected and strategically mistranslated articles to launder its information by attributing the stories to neutral and mainstream sources like the American news channel ABC News. Overall, Russian state media reporting worked to delegitimize pro democracy movements as foreign-backed conspiracies and to reinforce the narrative of authoritarian regimes whose stability and cooperation with Russia was seen as conducive to the Kremlin's interests in the region. As RT's spin on the Black Lives Matter movement showed, this global strategy was capable of absorbing any range of cultural and political ephemera. The focus on BLM and the representation of the movement to the Arab world as evidence of democracy's failure illustrated the replicability of strategic narratives across cultural and geopolitical fault lines.

The study explores Russia's use of information warfare during its conflict with Ukraine and the U.S.'s/NATO's counter responses. In its case study, the author finds support for the idea that Russia has turned extensively to social media to disseminate narratives aimed to undermine Ukraine and its institutions. It used fake accounts to spread narratives to frame the public perception of political events in Ukraine, including the narrative of Nazi atrocities and ethnic cleansing, the narrative of a coup d'état, the narrative of Western geopolitical expansion to Russia's sphere of influence, the narrative of the tale of one nation, and the narrative of the Crimea operation as a legitimate action. These accounts would also disseminate images of staged events depicting Ukrainians in an unfavorable light. A notable finding is that suspected military and civilian bloggers known as trolls were used, thus, blurring the distinction between civilians and military combatants. Such an approach differs from traditional propaganda. The author finds that U.S.'s/NATO's approach to countering Russian propaganda is also related to the use of narratives on social media. These can be classified according to five political themes: (1) narrative of a Russian military invasion, (2) narrative of despotism (criticism of President Putin), (3) narrative of propaganda war, (4) narrative of Slavic ancestry and ties to Europe, and (5) narrative of NATO intervention. In addition to using Twitter to spread those narratives, the U.S. also used traditional media, such as Radio Free Europe. Additionally, in 2011, the DoD agency unveiled the Social Media in Strategic Communications Program to address threats to national security posed by social media and enemy narratives. A similar effort was embraced by the Department of State while NATO also established the Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Riga, Latvia, as a partnership between Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the UK, and the U.S. to provide an alternative to the official Russian narrative.