Austrian edition of Der Standard and the Center for Crime and
Security Studies at Cardiff University in Wales have studied
Russian methods of disinformation campaigns. They received
horrific data on the victims of disinformation companies. The
study identified 32 prominent media outlets from 16 Western
countries. Who attacked by bots in 2018 - 2019. Among others,
these are: the Daily Mail, Daily Express and The Times from
the UK, Fox News and the Washington Post from the USA, Die
Welt and Der Spiegel from Germany, the French newspaper Le
Figaro and the Italian La Stampa. The researchers found that the
main direction of bot attacks is directed at comments. Bots and
trolls register on sites and make right-wing anti-Western
statements under articles. They harass commentators on social
media, and also call them at home with threats via instant
messengers. To set the tone for the discussion. According to the
publication of the Russian opposition media, the situation
reached the point of insulting ink inscriptions on the houses of
anti-Russian commentators. And also the inclusion in public
blacklists of people subject to liquidation, and so on. Up to
beatings.
This is done by the organization Patriot Media Group, Putin's
attorney, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is associated with the
intelligence services and News Front. The target audience of
such messages is Russian-speaking users. They are presented
with a picture of a reality in which dissatisfaction or rejection
of the positions of Western governments and support for Putin
is much stronger than it actually is. These articles are widely
distributed not only in Russia, but also in Central and Eastern
Europe. They enjoy particular success in the poor and
corruption Bulgaria and other economically backward countries.
As an example of the activities of trolls, the researchers cite three
Daily Mail users, who were quoted in the Russian portal "InoSMI".
The two accounts were created in mid and late 2020 and have
posted over 4,000 and 5,000 comments since then! The account
name that was created later changed five times and its location six
times, with more than half of these changes occurring between
March 1 and April 20. In the older account, at the time of the
analysis, the name changed 549 times and the location changed
69 times. The third account, with over 10,000 messages, has been
active since 2013, with relatively few name and location changes.
Recently, this user has focused on politics in the US and UK, and
has a tendency to blame other users in discussions.
The 302 Daily Mail users who were seen spreading pro-Russian
messages had fairly high approval rates from other readers compared
to a control group of 5801 users. This indicates a vote cheat, that is,
the use of troll accounts to consistently promote certain posts. This
is also indicated by the short period of time during which messages
from suspicious users receive a large number of votes. Reported by
Der Standard.
