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COVID-19 Attracts Patriotic Troll Campaigns in Support of China's Geopolitical Interests
From the Document: "Over the past several weeks, a loosely coordinated pro-China trolling campaign on Twitter has: [1] Harassed Western media outlets [2] Impersonated Taiwanese users in an effort to undermine Taiwan's position with the World Health Organisation (WHO) [3] Spread false information about the COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] outbreak [4] Joined in pre-existing inauthentic social media campaigns. At this stage, there's no clear evidence of state direction behind this trolling campaign. However, the trolling campaign is having a significant political impact, including being publicly identified by Taiwan's Investigation Bureau as interfering in the already complex relationship between Taiwan and the WHO."
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Thomas, Elise; Zhang, Albert
2020-04?
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ID2020, Bill Gates and the Mark of the Beast: How COVID-19 Catalyses Existing Online Conspiracy Movements
From the Document: "Against the backdrop of the global Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] pandemic, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has become the subject of a diverse and rapidly expanding universe of conspiracy theories. As an example, a recent poll found that 44% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats in the US now believe that Gates is linked to a plot to use vaccinations as a pretext to implant microchips into people. And it's not just America: 13% of Australians believe that Bill Gates played a role in the creation and spread of the coronavirus, and among young Australians it's 20%. Protests around the world, from Germany to Melbourne, have included anti-Gates chants and slogans."
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Thomas, Elise; Zhang, Albert
2020-06-25
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Covid-19 Disinformation and Social Media Manipulation: Automating Influence on Covid-19
From the Introduction: "ASPI ICPC [Australian Strategic Policy Institute International Cyber Policy Centre] has investigated a campaign of cross-platform inauthentic activity, conducted by Chinese-speaking actors and broadly in alignment with the political goal of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to denigrate the standing of the US. This appears to be targeted primarily at Western and US-based audiences by artificially boosting legitimate media and social media content in order to amplify divisive or negative narratives about the US. This has included highlighting racial tensions, amplifying criticisms of the US's handling of the coronavirus crisis, and political and personal scandals linked to President Donald Trump. However, there's no clear indication of a partisan lean in this campaign. President Trump appears to be criticised in his capacity as a leader of the US rather than as a presidential candidate. [...] This activity is valuable as a case study because it highlights the ways in which social media platforms provide a vector for small-scale actors to engage in covert political influence campaigns targeting citizens and voters in other nations in ways that can complement state-driven propaganda. The investigation offers insights into behavioural patterns that can reveal coordinated inauthentic activity designed to drive influence, even when it is disguised through selective sharing of authentic content by accounts with profiles that offer a veneer of legitimacy."
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Thomas, Elise; Zhang, Albert; Wallis, Jake
2020-08
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Covid-19 Disinformation and Social Media Manipulation: Viral Videos: Covid-19, China and Inauthentic Influence on Facebook
From the Introduction: "For the latest report in our series on Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] disinformation, we've investigated ongoing inauthentic activity on Facebook and, to a lesser extent, YouTube. This activity uses both English- and Chinese -language content to present narratives that support the political objectives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). These narratives span a range of topics, including assertions of corruption and incompetence in the Trump administration, the US Government's decision to ban TikTok, the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, and the ongoing tensions in the US-China relationship. A major theme, and the focus of this report, is criticism of how the US broadly, and the Trump administration in particular, are handling the Covid-19 crisis on both the domestic and the global levels."
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Thomas, Elise; Zhang, Albert; Wallis, Jake
2020-09
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Covid-19 Disinformation and Social Media Manipulation: Pro-Russian Vaccine Politics Drives New Disinformation Narratives
From the Introduction: "On 17 July, a press release was posted to the websites of the Luhansk People's Republic, the pro-Russian self-declared state in Luhansk, Eastern Ukraine. The press release related to a supposed US Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] vaccine trial that had been conducted on Ukrainian volunteers, including soldiers, in Kharkiv (which is controlled by the Ukrainian Government). According to the press release, of the 15 patients who received the trial vaccine, five were killed, including four Ukrainian soldiers. The press release was published the day after Russia announced plans to mass-produce its own vaccine in a matter of weeks. The Ukrainian vaccine trial never happened. However, this disinformation narrative--which has clear political, anti-American and anti-Ukrainian Government undertones--has achieved widespread dissemination in multiple languages and across multiple communities. [...] The success of this completely fictional narrative reflects a broader shift across the disinformation space. As the world's focus moves from the initial response to the coronavirus crisis towards the race to a vaccine, with all of the complex geopolitical interests that entails, political disinformation is also moving on from the origins of the virus to the vaccine race. This report uses the US-Ukrainian vaccine narrative as a case study to examine how political disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines is being laundered into the international information ecosystem."
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Thomas, Elise; Zhang, Albert; Currey, Emilia
2020-08
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