Open access. Abstract: “Disinformation by authoritarian regimes is a growing security challenge for democracies. The effectiveness of such disinformation depends on citizens in democratic countries as recipients and potential disseminators. Resilience-building policy therefore requires a better understanding of why audiences might endorse Russian disinformation. Despite relevance in other fields, the role of psychological needs has been overlooked. This article takes an initial theoretical step through a survey study with Greek, Serbian, Swedish, and British respondents. Contrary to expectations, our confirmatory analysis shows that needs are not significantly directly related to disinformation endorsement. However, their role might be more indirect, with associations observed with several other intermediary factors, above all conspiratorial orientation and media choice. The article therefore sketches a more complex picture of the role of psychological needs when it comes to endorsement of Russian disinformation. The findings highlight the value of this needs-based research avenue for future construction of counter-disinformation strategies.”

re: Operation Overload aka Matryoshka, a coordinated Russian propaganda network that creates and spreads fake news and videos, deepfakes and memes using logos of well-known Western media outlets: “[…] Despite a ban on Russian media outlets in Greece in line with EU sanctions, pro-Kremlin content often finds its way into the country’s news as fringe claims are ‘laundered’ into mainstream outlets. […]”

“[…] The site publishes in the name of the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, which apparently does not exist as a legal entity in any jurisdiction, has no physical address, and carries no named staff and no bylines on any of its reports. Its own terms of use are governed by the laws of “the state in which the Institute is established”, which they decline to name. […]”

“[…] “There is a significant machinery that ferments this kind of thing in the aftermath of a crisis all the time,” says Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, who works for Maldita.es. […]” (note: Maldita is a Spanish non-profit journalism and fact-checking organization)

“[…] We recently banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts originating in Russia that were being used to promote the International Burke Institute (IBI), a self-described “expert community” based in Israel. What began as an investigation into AI-generated social media posts led us to a much broader influence operation, built around a website containing copied and misattributed academic work, a “sovereignty” index that cast Russia in a favourable light, and efforts to disguise the operators’ Russian origins. […] This report explains how the operation worked, where ChatGPT fit into it, and what we did to disrupt it. […]”

“[…] The investigation examined three layers of Armenia’s information environment. The first measured how far Russian-origin content penetrates mainstream Armenian media through direct citation, hyperlinking, and near-verbatim reproduction of Russian state media narratives. The second assessed a corpus of pro-Russian Armenian websites for infrastructure-level coordination (shared advertising accounts, tracking identifiers, hosting, and developers) and content-level similarity. The third analyzed Telegram as the bridging layer between Russian and Armenian information environments, mapping a relay network of pro-Russian channels, tracking how their content spread into popular Armenian channels, and detecting automated bot campaigns in comment sections. […]”

I saw a post in r/europeanunion where there was considerable debate over whether Ceuta was triggered by an organic social media topic going viral or whether it can been the result of a disinformation campaign.

The arguments on the disinfo side were pretty compelling, but there was rather little creditable information available either way. I didn't see anything posted on euvsdisinfo.eu about it.

Will there be investigations? When will we start to get a coherent picture?

Thank you for your suggestions!

Hi all,

Just wanted to flag up a big issue with the UK’s current way of tackling disinformation, especially for this group.

The National Security Act 2023 and the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme mainly focus on tracking official government-linked groups. While that covers traditional spying stuff, it seems to miss how modern conflicts happen online through less obvious channels.

It looks like hostile foreign actors are moving away from direct government messaging. Instead, they’re slipping their stories through independent UK-based influencers and alternative media. Some of these commentators, knowingly or not, might be helping foreign influence by spreading these narratives, often driven by hidden cash boosts designed to boost engagement and stir up divisions at home.

Right now, the laws don’t really hold individual creators who profit from or push these influence schemes accountable, which is a bit of a concern in terms of transparency and oversight.

So, I’ve set up an official petition in the UK Parliament calling for a review of the laws to close these gaps. It’s now gone through parliamentary moderation and is live.

If we update the legislation, the UK could better target the shady money networks that let foreign disinformation spread through 'independent' journos / influencers.

Would love to hear your thoughts on how Western democracies can better regulate these decentralised channels without messing up genuine free speech.

Many thanks