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Sense of nationality continues to be extremely powerful, and in today's globalized world, is getting even stronger. At first glance, the most obvious sign of the nation's community are language and origin, but too many nations seem to have no common ancestry, or even using only one language. Moreover, the most violent clashes burst out between people, professing the same religion and belonging more or less to the same culture. What makes most people to anticipate their national affiliations as an integral element of his/her own "I", and to invent their own past to find "worthy" place for their community? What can cause an ethno-national community or at least its elite to deny their relationship with another nation and to claim themselves as belonging to a completely different community, deliberately ignoring the "uncomfortable" facts? The purpose of this book is to make a critical review of some deep-rooted cliches and generally accepted axioms. The Bulgarian, Balkan and Slavic national passions are considered in the context of ethnogenesis and the formation of European nations and the world.
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The Arab states of the Persian Gulf have played a huge role in the unfolding developments of the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt. Based on many pieces of evidence, we can set up an analytical framework for investigating the transformations of Egyptian politics between 2011 and 2013, according to which the turmoil was basically a proxy cold war fought by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait on one hand, and Qatar on the other. Although the Gulf agreement signed in April 2014 clearly shows the inevitability of the defeat of Qatar, Doha will remain an important player in the region, while the rebound of the Muslim Brotherhood is now unimaginable without the support of the tiny country.
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The malicious use of social media is a widespread phenomenon, targeting individuals, public opinion, and in some cases even the functioning of the state. In recent years, social media platforms have been abused by foreign governments, private companies, and individuals to influence the outcomes of democratic elections and to undermine public trust in the societies in which we live. Today, social media platforms are manipulated by malign actors in order to pursue their political and military goals. In other words, social media platforms have developed into an effective tool for waging information warfare. Although information warfare is nothing new, social media platforms offer a cheaper, more efficient, and less demanding stage for influencing larger numbers of people than ever before. While the social media platforms are conduits facilitating the free passage of information, the companies that own them are active participants wielding significant influence over what takes place in the social media space and, increasingly, over how we communicate, interact, and socialise in the 21st century.
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The publication is focused on the topic of local media that is often neglected in the field of media studies. The main points of view are the analysis of local audiences and the characteristics of the relationship between local media and local audiences. The international group of nineteen authors maps the specifics of the functioning of local media and, more generally, local communication in different (mainly European) states.
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In October, protests broke out in Lebanon following a proposal to introduce new taxes. The demonstrations, which were unprecedented in uniting members of all religious groups in Lebanon and led to the resignation of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, increased the chances the state will make economic reforms and fight corruption. The protesters demand new elections, which are highly unlikely because Hezbollah holds the dominant position in the government and has rejected this idea. A stable situation in Lebanon is in Poland’s interest as it provides aid to the country and Polish soldiers take part in the UNIFIL mission.
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W październiku w Libanie wybuchły protesty wywołane propozycją wprowadzenia nowych podatków. Bezprecedensowy charakter demonstracji, które zjednoczyły członków wszystkich grup wyznaniowych w Libanie i doprowadziły do rezygnacji premiera Sada al-Haririego, zwiększa szansę na reformy gospodarcze i walkę z korupcją. Protestujący domagają się nowych wyborów, które jednak są mało prawdopodobne ze względu na sprzeciw dominującego w rządzie Hezbollahu. Ustabilizowanie sytuacji leży w interesie Polski, która przekazuje Libanowi środki na pomoc rozwojową, a jej żołnierze biorą udział w misji UNIFIL.
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Russia runs disinformation campaigns against the EU using traditional media and the internet, including social media. Yet, the effectiveness of the fight against Russian disinformation by the Union and its Member States has so far been limited. These activities require strengthening at the international and national levels, as well as increasing public awareness of the use of media.
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Rosja prowadzi kampanie dezinformacyjne przeciw Unii Europejskiej, wykorzystując media tradycyjne oraz internet, w tym media społecznościowe. Skuteczność zwalczania rosyjskiej dezinformacji przez UE i państwa członkowskie była dotychczas ograniczona. Działania te wymagają wzmocnienia na poziomie międzynarodowym i krajowym, a także zwiększenia świadomości społecznej na temat korzystania z mediów.
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Information laundering (IL) is a stratagem used by hostile actors within an information influence campaign. In this process, false or deceitful information is legitimised through a network of intermediaries that gradually apply a set of techniques to distort it and obscure the original source. In the context of this research, IL is leveraged by Kremlin-official or pro-Kremlin actors in a hostile information influence campaign (HIIC) to further their interests in Germany. Information Laundering represents a relatively new approach to information influence activities targeting a particular media environment. In the context of this report, IL research allows governments, national institutions and civil society to reach a deeper understanding of the activity of domestic and transnational networks that enable the spread of the Kremlin’s influence in a particular country, since it uncovers how actors gradually distort, disseminate, and legitimise a piece of information through the application of IL techniques.
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Informationswäsche (IL, engl. Information Laundering) ist ein Strategem, das von Akteuren mit feindlichen Absichten bei Kampagnen zur Informationsbeeinflussung eingesetzt wird. Die Bezeichnung leitet sich vom Begriff der Geldwäsche ab und weitet die Metapher auf Nachrichten aus. Das bedeutet, ein Netzwerk von Vermittlern legitimiert falsche oder trügerische Informationen. Dafür wird schrittweise eine Reihe an Methoden eingesetzt, um die Informationen zu verdrehen und die ursprüngliche Quelle zu verschleiern. Der Schwerpunkt dieser Arbeit liegt auf Informationswäsche, die von kremlfreundlichen oder offiziellen Akteuren des Kreml ausgeht. Im Zuge aggressiver Kampagnen zur Informationsbeeinflussung sollen die eigenen Interessen in Deutschland vorangebracht werden. Informationswäsche ist ein relativ neuer Ansatz bei Maßnahmen zur Informationsbeeinflussung, die auf eine bestimmte Medienlandschaft abzielen. Diese Arbeit deckt auf, wie Akteure mithilfe von Methoden der Informationswäsche nach und nach Informationen verdrehen, verbreiten und legitimieren. Dadurch können Regierungen, staatliche Institutionen und die Zivilgesellschaft besser verstehen, welche Aktionen heimischer und transnationaler Netzwerke zur Ausweitung des Einflusses des Kreml in einem bestimmten Land beitragen.
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The penetration of external information influence in a domestic media ecosystem is largely enabled by the interactions between foreign and domestic actors. The term ‘Information Laundering’ describes how these actors manipulate and amplify manipulated information in a particular media environment and the techniques utilised for such purposes. This report evaluates to what extent Kremlin-official and pro-Kremlin actors leverage Information Laundering techniques to conduct influence campaigns in the Nordic-Baltic countries and examines the role that domestic and foreign actors play in enabling these campaigns to reach target audiences. For this purpose, the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence developed a theoretical model of Information Laundering presented in this study. The model was applied to a comparative analysis of 32 Information Laundering cases, linked to the activity of 570 single actors in the eight Nordic-Baltic countries. Through researching Information Laundering in the region, this report aims to support national institutions in their goal to build resilience against hostile information influence operations.
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This is the second volume issued in the framework of the project ‘Russia’s (Dis-)Information Campaigns in Nordic-Baltic Countries’. This project was initiated in 2016 as an ongoing effort to monitor and analyse Russia’s (dis-)information influence in the Nordic-Baltic region, which includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden (the NB8). The first volume was published in January 2018.
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Bot activity this quarter fixated on the global COVID-19 pandemic, with conversations about the virus captured by our dataset peaking in March. Pro-Kremlin social media accounts amplified a false story, originally shared by a Russian politician, that Poland closed its airspace to Russian planes delivering humanitarian aid to Italy. Though we found that bots commanded the Russian-language conversations about COVID-19, their content was no more viral than examples from recent Robotrolling reports. Throughout this quarter, we observed a considerable reduction in both the number of unique users and volume of messages. Inauthentic English- and Russian-language activity experienced a similar decline. Since late March, Russian-language activity on Twitter and on VK has been abnormally low. On VK, the conversation about NATO in the Baltics and Poland is currently being conducted in groups with regional or nationalist profiles. Notably, the large Russian state-run media outlets we frequently observe on the platform have engaged far less with the subject in recent months. Additionally, we observed a halving of posts from bot accounts this quarter. Finally, in this edition of Robotrolling, we delve into the role of pro-Kremlin bots in spreading disinformation about COVID-19 throughout March. In our analysis, we identify striking differences between how bots engaged with COVID-19 in the Russian- and English-language information spaces.
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Inauthentic activity in the Russian-language information space this quarter targeted NATO military exercises, peaking on 8 June with the commencement of BALTOPS in the Baltic Sea. Conversations amplified by both automated and anonymous accounts portrayed NATO’s summer exercises as exceptionally aggressive and demonstrative of the alliance’s ambitions to expand into Belarus and Ukraine. Throughout this quarter, we observed a significant increase in English-language bot activity. This flurry of activity was triggered by public statements suggesting the US move nuclear weapons, troops, and military equipment from Germany to Poland for permanent deployment. While the volume of Russian-language automated activity on both Twitter and VK shrunk this quarter, the percentage of conversations amplified by bot voices increased. Statebacked media outlets Sputnik and RT were popular sources of information among both English- and Russian-language audiences. The latter two sections of this report concentrate on the deleted account dataset published by Twitter in June 2020. First, we compare our list of previously identified bot accounts with those published by Twitter, which is visualised in Figure 5. Second, we evaluate Twitter’s capacity for combatting inauthentic activity on its platform, concluding that rates of identification, suspension, and deletion of accounts are unnecessarily slow.
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This quarter, the disputed presidential election result and nationwide protests in Belarus were the main targets of inauthentic Russian-language accounts, resulting in a cluster of spikes in fake activity in August. Pro-Lukashenka users concocted an external threat from NATO by pushing false claims of NATO buildup along the Belarusian border and shared rumours of impending intervention. Automated users asserted that NATO posed an internal threat in Belarus as well, alleging that the demonstrations are “puppeteered” by the West. The situation in Belarus coincided with the most pronounced uptick in attention from identifiably human Russian-language accounts. Compared to the previous report, the portion of messages attributed to identifiable humans increased from 14% to 18% on Twitter and from 26% to nearly 30% on VK. This increase in legitimate engagement in NATO-related discussions of Belarus drove down the percentage of bot users to the lowest figure we have observed, 15% on Russian Twitter and 19% on VK. English-language activity focused on Polish affairs, both independently and in relation to the ongoing protests in Belarus. Inauthentic English-language discussions peaked with announcements of US troop relocation from Germany to Poland. In September, former US vice president Joe Biden made critical comments about Hungary and Poland, triggering the highest volume of automated retweets from English-language bots this quarter. Finally, in this instalment of Robotrolling we take a look at the supply side of fake social media accounts. The second iteration of the COE’s social media manipulation experiment tracks variation between the responses of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok to inauthentic engagement. Strikingly, the report found that Instagram is 10x cheaper to manipulate than Facebook, TikTok has virtually no self-regulatory defences, and it remains easy to manipulate US senators’ accounts, even during an election period.
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This quarter, we observed a significant drop in both authentic and inauthentic engagement with the topic of NATO in Poland and the Baltics. The number of bots and the volume of messages they disseminated decreased among both English- and Russian-language communities on Twitter and VK. Spikes in bot activity this winter coincided with NATO military exercises. Inauthentic accounts placed particular emphasis on unfounded claims of disorderly conduct among NATO soldiers and the alleged effects that military exercises have on local civilian populations. Throughout this period, inauthentic accounts also amplified claims of turmoil within the alliance and fears of military buildup along the border of Kaliningrad. While Russian-language bot activity was focused primarily on military affairs, English-language bot activity was centered on US affairs in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, particularly debates over how the Biden administration will impact US-Polish relations and transatlantic security more generally. In this issue of Robotrolling, we also discuss the steps Twitter has taken to protect its platforms from attempts to incite violence, organise attacks, and share misinformation following the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. This regulatory enforcement resulted in the removal of tens of thousands of accounts connected to QAnon conspiracy theorists. Our analysis is accompanied by a visualisation of the English-language accounts mentioning the NATO presence in Poland and the Baltics, demonstrating the impact these account removals will have on the information space.
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Survey conducted between 9 and 16 February 2019 on a national sample of 1106 people. He measured the perception of the public health system in Romania, the trust in the national political leaders, the evaluation of Traian Băsescu, the appreciation of the parties, the voting intentions.
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Survey conducted between November 27 and December 5, 2018 on a sample of 1087 people. He measured issues such as: union with the Republic of Moldova, special pensions, electronic voting, expectations from the European Union and MEPs, the perception of Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă, confidence in political leaders, voting intentions, evaluation of the last four presidents of Romania.
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