Kremlin online propaganda fighter # 1- Ben Nimmo

In mid-August, the news reported that Ben Nimmo, one of the leading figures in the fight against Kremlin propaganda, is joining Graphika, a social network analytical company, as director of online research.

Nimmo is known to Propastop readers and the public as the main revealer and liquidator of the Kremlin’s influence on the electronic information space. Prior to joining Graphika, he was also a leading figure and research analyst at the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, which is much cited in our articles. Nimmo will continue to advise DFRLab.

Ben, who has been a diver and a backpacker and even written two books about it, has close relationships with the Baltic countries. Namely, he worked as a journalist in the Baltic States and experienced the events of the Bronze Soldier night in 2007.

After his time as a journalist in the Baltic States, he worked for the NATO Press Service, covering the 2011-2014 NATO-Russia and NATO-Ukraine relations.

As Eliot Higgens is the leading figure in the fight against the Kremlin in online investigations, Ben is his counterpart in fighting influence activities in social networking.

His topics have been Twitter and the ongoing bot army battles and later the information manipulation on Facebook. DFRLab in partnership with Facebook has discontinued several influence campaigns against societies around the world on this platform in the last year.

Ben has made sure people recognize bots, trolls, fake accounts and networks created for manipulation. A translation of this story has also been published by ERR.

Based on his experience, Nimmo has created and formulated a 4D model (dismiss, distort, distract, dismay) for understanding the Kremlin’s influence activities, which makes it easier to understand the essence of Russia’s propaganda strategy.

The seriousness of Ben’s role in combating Kremlin manipulation is characterized by several negative stories on Russia Today and the Sputnik channels. There is also no shortage of attacks by the Russian Troll army against Nimmo on social media and other channels, the most serious of which was to attempt spreading false information about Ben’s death.

A full-length interview with Ben can be heard as a podcast on this address: https://www.notanotherfakenewscast.com/ben-nimmo

Photos: screenshots from Ben Nimmo’s twitter account