An online community based around dog memes has become an unlikely thorn in the side of Kremlin propagandists.
‘Vatnik’ was first defined by Russians as a jingoistic follower of their government’s propaganda. Some people are trying to make you think otherwise.
Propastop traced the fake news spreading from Narva and discovered a number of fake accounts. Their very large number was surprising.
Last week, media reports revealed, that in April the identities of dozens of followers in the Twitter accounts of Estonian politicians and opinion leaders are in question. Propastop’s editorial board looked into the doubts in question.
On December 18th the Vikerraadio program Uudis+ (News +) broadcast had the program director Mirk Ojakivi and the CEO of the Estonian Newspaper Association, Mart Raudsaar discussing false news. Mr. Raudsaar put forth the idea that Estonia needs a special unit for fighting false news.
Propastop regards November as a rather modest and calm month for ant-Estonian influence activities. Russia remained passive, mostly by the prolongation of familiar propaganda events in various stories on their web of national media channels.
At the beginning of the month, NATO’s Strat Com centre in Riga published a study in which they found that in some limited topics the majority of Twitter’s Russian-language posts were automated bots. Can this conclusion be generalized for all of Twitter?
Activities to block the spread of false news in Social media are progressing at an ever-increasing pace. Propastop analyzes the development of this topic.
The upcoming Catalonia independence referendum on October 1 has caused the Russian propaganda machine to turn its attention towards Spain. Read it here!
The Alliance for Securing Democracy initiated an analytical centre called Hamilton68 in August, where they give a real-time overview of Russian influence operations on Twitter.