Propaganda in the month of July

The topic of Helme’s interview with the Russian propaganda channel Baltnews raised by Propastop was also well received in other media. Delfi published an article commenting on and extending the topic as well as supplementing the coverage with a long commentary by Kristen Michal. Kanal2’s news show, „Reporter“ also released a long piece on the subject.

Another big issue in July was Faceap, an application developed by a Russian source. The app, which proved to be very popular, was used by more than 150 million users in a short period of time, attracting attention because of its origins as well as its high risk to user privacy.

Forbes had a wide coverage on the topic. It wrote about the nature, background, privacy, economic impact of the app as well as about its author and creator.

Genius .ee published a story about app privacy issues and a follow-up on how similar fake applications bring phone ads.

A USA Senator’s request to have the FBI investigate the application also received much coverage.

In July, Postimees published an interview with David Patrikarakos. Propastop also conducted an interview with Patrikarakos when he visited Estonia in May. You can read it here.

In July, a long interview with the recently former Defence League Commander, Major General Meelis Kiili was published in the magazine „Sõdur“ (Soldier). The article dealt extensively on the image of Estonian Defence in the Russian media.

Several articles were published in July on Russia’s influence activities. ERR wrote about how Jessika Aro, who is familiar with Propastop’s readers, made a presentation to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives. Edward Lucas wrote in Postimees about history and Russia’s interest in serving it from its own perspective. Toomas Alatalu discussed the nature of sport as a soft power in a story published in ERR.

In July several stories of Fake news and manipulation appeared. Sandra Saar wrote in ERR about why people do not notice fake news. On the same channel, Marju Himma discussed issues related to the coverage of research and Otto Tuul wrote about the nature of freedom of speech based on his thesis material.

In July, we also saw a rather peculiar situation where one Member State of the European Union is actively and purposefully targeting another Member State in the media. Namely ERR, Postimees and Delfi wrote in July about Hungary’s criticism of Finland on its media and justice system.

Photo: Screenshots of Postimees.ee and ERR.ee environments