StopFake #222 with Marko Suprun
Fake: UN calls Ukraine the most dangerous country in the world. Moldova renounces Transnistria for NATO. The Strategic Cultural Foundation unmasked, not too cultural, but very strategic.
StopFake #222 with Marko Suprun
Jakub Janda: StopFake set up the agenda of Russian disinformation as a major threat
StopFake talked to Jakub Janda, Head of the Kremlin Watch Program and Director at the European Values Think-Tank, about the current trends of Russian disinformation in Europe, contemporary challenges and the role of governments, journalists, and civil society in denouncing disinformation. How would you evaluate StopFake’s performance during the last 5 years? Do you think it was a necessary and ready initiative? If yes, in what ways? StopFake…
Propaganda and disempowerment
By EU vs Disinfo Mass media are grouped along two major concepts: Media as a Forum or media as a Tribune. This is, of course, a theoretical model to describe two ideal types of relations between the media and its audience. The concept of the Forum is based on a horizontal exchange of ideas and views. In general, the media lends itself to a function as a space for a public discourse. The forum is not a…
Russian state media decries Ukraine for renaming its own cities
By Polygraph RIA Novosti Russian state-owned media outlet “‘Not Odessa, but Kotsyubeyev!’ Why does Kyiv erase the real names of cities” Source: RIA Novosti website FALSE Ukraine is a sovereign country that can rename its cities as it sees fit: there are no “real” names. On February 11, the Russian state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti published an op-ed criticizing Ukraine’s renaming of towns and other toponyms in accordance with the…
“Party of war” or “pro-peace?”
By Poman Shutov, for Ukrainian Election Task Force To discredit some of the candidates running in the upcoming Ukrainian presidential election, Kremlin propaganda outlets accuse candidates trying to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression of warmongering. Meanwhile, these propaganda outlets praise Ukrainian candidates who advocate for peace “here and now” under Moscow’s conditions, labeling them pro-peace candidates. Thus, the Kremlin-controlled propaganda machine uses the candidates’ various roadmaps for peace as yet…
Are Russian trolls saving measles from extinction?
By Ron Synovitz, for RFE/RL Scientific researchers say Russian social-media trolls who spread discord before the 2016 U.S. presidential election may also have played an unintended role in a developing global health crisis. They say the trolls may have contributed to the 2018 outbreak of measles in Europe that killed 72 people and infected more than 82,000 — mostly in Eastern and Southeastern European countries known to have been targeted…
Kseniya Kirillova: The power of disappointment
By Kseniya Kirillova, for Integrity Initiative In the first year of the Russian-Ukrainian war, while trying to understand the origins of the patriotic upsurge that had gripped Russia after its aggression against a neighbouring state, I wrote about the vagueness of moral norms in public consciousness. The same thoughts were later expressed by many political scientists and publicists: Kremlin propaganda does not try to convince Russians that their country is…
Witch-Hunt! Which Hunt?
By EU vs Disinfo This has been a rough week for Russia. The country is subject to a witch-hunt in Germany, Latvia is provoking the EU to fight with Russia, and while the EU might be decaying and falling apart, it is still capable of striking terrible blows on Russia, a country that has never done any harm to anyone. In addition to those false claims, even the ambassador of the EU to Russia is…
Outside the Kremlin comfort zone
By EU vs Disinfo Last time it was RT. Now it’s NTV’s turn to have been found in “serious failure of compliance with impartiality rules” by the UK’s broadcasting watchdog, Ofcom. And Ofcom is “minded to consider the breach for statutory sanction,” it says in the bulletin it published on 11 February. This translates into the Russian broadcaster potentially facing a fine, or even, as a last resort, losing its license to broadcast…
An unfounded foundation
By EU vs Disinfo The Strategic Culture Foundation has all the features of a modern, state-of-the-art think tank. An all-English site; tightly laid-out with a wide choice of articles on current affairs, focusing on World Politics and Security Issues. The site’s mission statement declares: “SCF works to broaden and diversify expert discussion by focusing on hidden aspects of international politics and unconventional thinking. Benefiting from the expanding power of the…
