Superspreaders of Malign and Subversive Information on COVID-19: Russian and Chinese Efforts Targeting the United States   [open html - 0B]

From the Preface: "The global spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) created a fertile ground for attempts to influence and destabilize different populations and countries. Both Russia and China appear to have employed information manipulation during the COVID-19 pandemic in service to their respective global agendas. This report uses exploratory qualitative analysis to systematically describe the types of COVID-19-related malign and subversive information efforts with which Russia- and China-associated outlets appear to have targeted U.S. audiences from January 2020 to July 2020 and organizes them into a framework. This work lays the foundation for a better understanding of how and whether Russia and China might act and coordinate in the domain of malign and subversive information efforts in the future. This is the first in a series of two reports, the second of which will use big data, computational linguistics, and machine learning to test findings and hypotheses generated by this report."