Search

Begin New Search Topic News Analysis

1. Undermining Ukraine: How the Kremlin employs information operations to erode global confidence in Ukraine

Author:
Roman Osadchuk and Andy Carvin
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
In the lead-up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin and its proxies perpetrated information operations to justify military action against Ukraine, mask its operational planning, and deny any responsibility for the war. DOWNLOAD PDF Once the war began in earnest, Russia expanded its strategy with an additional emphasis on undermining Ukraine’s ability to resist in hopes of forcing the country to surrender or enter negotiations on Russia’s terms. This strategic expansion included efforts to maintain control of information and support for the war effort at home, undercut Ukrainian resistance, derail support for Ukrainian resistance among allies and partners, especially in the immediate region, and engage in aggressive information operations internationally to shape public opinion about Russia’s war of aggression, including in Africa and Latin America. Building upon daily monitoring by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), this report synthesizes Kremlin attempts to undermine Ukraine by targeting local, regional, and global audiences over the course of 2022 since the start of the war on February 24 of that year.
Topic:
Media, News Analysis, Conflict, Information Warfare, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

2. Palestinian Expectations from The Biden Administration

Author:
Rawan AbuJulia
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Mitvim: The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies
Abstract:
The United States’ (US) foreign policy trend of intervention in the Middle East has long been accepted as a truism in international relations and politics. For decades, the US has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to peace in the Middle East and has made commendable efforts to mediate the Israel-Palestine conflict. While Washington-Palestinian relations experienced tension during Trump presidency, the victory of Biden left the Palestinians upbeat. Today, one year into Biden’s tenure, the Palestinians continue to hold mixed expectations of the Biden administration’s ability to advance the peace process. This paper attempts, in particular, to analyze the Palestinians’ expectations of the of the Biden Administration, as articulated by high officials and leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): a legitimate authority representing the Palestinian people recognized by Israel in 1993.[1] An approach that aims to understand Palestinian expectations can yield major benefits: it can contribute to making progress toward better conflict resolution, help advance the peace process, and likely revive the two-state solution. In fact, ignoring Palestinian expectations might lead to misunderstanding, miscommunication and could perhaps interrupt or even thwart the peace process entirely. To identify these expectations, this paper relies on Palestinian and international news sources, along with open governmental data published by the US government and the Palestinian Authority. This paper is divided into four sections. The first section presents the efforts that different US administrations made to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The second section summarizes President Trump’s policy towards the Palestinians, highlighting actions that provoked strong condemnation by the Palestinians. The third section presents President Biden’s policy toward the Palestinians in the first year of his administration, emphasizing the main differences between Biden and Trump’s decisions. The fourth and final part presents the overarching Palestinian expectations from the Biden administration.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Media, News Analysis, Peace, and Joe Biden
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and United States of America

3. Narrative Warfare: How the Kremlin and Russian news outlets justified a war of aggression against Ukraine

Author:
Nika Aleksejeva and Andy Carvin
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
In the weeks and months leading up to Russia invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin media employed false and misleading narratives to justify military action against Ukraine, mask the Kremlin’s operational planning, and deny any responsibility for the coming war. Collectively, these narratives served as Vladimir Putin’s casus belli to engage in a war of aggression against Ukraine. To research this report, the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) identified recurring pro-Kremlin narratives over two timeframes: the 2014–2021 interwar period and the seventy days leading up to the 2022 invasion. For the interwar period, we reviewed more than 350 fact-checks of pro-Kremlin disinformation. We then collected more than ten thousand examples of false and misleading narratives published by fourteen pro-Kremlin outlets over the seventy-day pre-invasion period. To understand how these narratives evolved, we catalogued them by themes, sub-narratives, and relationships to pre-invasion escalatory events. This allowed us to produce a timeline of false and misleading Kremlin narratives encompassing the year leading to the invasion, showing how Russia weaponized these narratives as its actions on the ground escalated toward war.
Topic:
News Analysis, Conflict, Narrative, Information Warfare, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

4. You’ll never talk alone: what media narratives on European reforms reveal about a polity in the making

Author:
Emmanuel Mourion-Druol, Henrik Müller, Giuseppe Porcaro, and Tobias Schmidt
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Bruegel
Abstract:
This paper analyses the discourse since 2001 in three leading national business newspapers about reforms in the European Union: Handelsblatt (Germany), Il Sole (Italy) and Les Echos (France). We collected and organised a large dataset of articles published in these three newspapers. We used topic modelling to identify latent topics across articles. Based on this database, we then addressed four research questions and found: a relative degree of synchronisation of reform debates across the three countries; comparable reporting patterns, especially around the main crises; a greater degree of direction of the debate towards European issues over national issues in Germany than in France and Italy; and the tentative emergence of a shared narrative about crises. Finally, we highlight that bringing conflict and contestation back into European discussions may help stimulate wider interest in European matters.
Topic:
Reform, European Union, Media, and News Analysis
Political Geography:
Europe

5. News Media and its Influence on the American Debate over War and Peace

Author:
Violet Gienger
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
Even the most diligent news consumers, flooded with information, disinformation, and infotainment, miss key elements of the biggest stories. Journalists, pressed by deadlines and ever-shrinking resources — due to staff cuts and the elimination of foreign bureaus and even copy desks, for example — leave crucial gaps in coverage. The result is a dearth of the kinds of in-depth, well-rounded news and accountability journalism that the American public and their leaders depend on for decision-making in a democracy.
Topic:
Democracy, Media, News Analysis, Journalism, and Decision-Making
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

6. From Media-Party Linkages to Ownership Concentration Causes of Cross-National Variation in Media Outlets’ Economic Positioning

Author:
Erik Neimanns and Nils Blossey
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
A sizable literature on media bias suggests that media coverage is frequently biased towards certain political and economic positions. However, we know little about what drives variation in political and ideological bias in news coverage across countries. In this paper, we argue that increasingly commercialized and concentrated media markets are likely to be associated with media coverage leaning more favorably towards economically more rightwing positions. Media bias should reflect the preferences of media owners and should be a result of a reduced diversity of news media content. In contrast, where media outlets continue to be oriented more closely along partisan lines, often referred to as political parallelism, bias on economic issues should be more likely to cancel out at the aggregate level. To test these claims, we combine expert survey data on partisan attachments of media outlets, party ideologies, and media ownership concentration for twenty-four European countries. Results from multilevel regression models support our theoretical expectations. With media framing potentially affecting individual-level preferences and perceptions, high and rising levels of media ownership concentration may help to explain why governments in the affluent Western democracies often do remarkably little to counter trends of rising income inequality.
Topic:
Politics, Media, News Analysis, and Bias
Political Geography:
Europe

7. A New Season of Unrest in Lebanon

Author:
Andrea Carboni
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)
Abstract:
ACLED has completed a review of the Lebanese news outlet El Nashra in a monthslong effort to improve coverage of political violence and protest throughout Lebanon. The data release has resulted in the addition of over 2,000 events to the ACLED dataset, accounting for approximately a fourth of the total events recorded between 2016 and 2021 across the country. While not altering underlying trends observed in previous analysis, this supplementation significantly enhances the disaggregation of the ACLED dataset, with more than 60 new locations now recorded as sites of political disorder in Lebanon. What follows is an updated assessment of recent trends in conflict and demonstration activity around the country.
Topic:
Political Violence, News Analysis, Protests, and Civil Unrest
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

8. FAKE NEWS MISINFORMATION AND HATE SPEECH IN ETHIOPIA: A VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT

Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
European Institute of Peace (EIP)
Abstract:
​Fake news, misinformation, and hate speech have thrived in the Ethiopian media ecosystem, and particularly online. This is strongly correlated with significant, tragic, real-world consequences, exacerbated pre-existing tensions, and contributed to violence and conflict. To date, the Government of Ethiopia’s response to combating the spread of fake news, misinformation, and hate speech has been, by necessity, heavy-handed, with the go-to response to escalation being to turn off the internet for the entire country. The vulnerability assessment aims to outline an approach and framework to improve the understanding of fake news, misinformation, and hate speech in Ethiopia, to develop a more nuanced and tailored approach to addressing a real national challenge. While this study is preliminary and indicative, drawing on a relatively small sample size, it is hoped that it can be illustrative and used to improve the national conversation regarding the federal response to fake news, misinformation, and hate speech. Still, it does not claim to be and should not be considered the final word on the matter. The assessment found that Ethiopia’s media ecosystem’s weaknesses have made it vulnerable to fake news, misinformation, and hate speech. Some of the driving factors are undoubtedly historical, including the weak state of private media in Ethiopia, the critical role of the Ethiopian diaspora in media ownership, and the proliferation and wild rise in popularity of entertainment-news page services Facebook and Twitter. The report proposes a pro-active and risk-based approach, which identifies likely and potentially fake news, misinformation, and hate speech flashpoints and lays out the actions that will be required to mitigate them.
Topic:
Communications, Mass Media, Media, News Analysis, Hate Speech, Disinformation, and Misinformation
Political Geography:
Africa and Ethiopia

9. Predictors of Fake News Sharing on Social Media during COVID-19 in South Asia: Evidence from Pakistan

Author:
Malik Adnan, Muhammad Bilal Nawaz, and Rao Shahid Mahood Khan
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
Spread of fake news has been rapidly increased in recent months and the determinants that lead the sharing of misleading information is not well studied. Henceforth, this study analyzes the result of a Pakistani sample (n=385) regarding proliferation of fake news regarding COVID-19. This phenomenon was studied by using uses and gratification framework it was extended by the altruistic motivation. An explanatory research design was followed, data was collected through questionnaire based on prior studies and respondents were approached through different social media websites and answers were collected through Google forms by following convenient sampling technique. Acquired responses were analyzed through regression model to investigate the magnitude of effects among the six categories of study on the result of fake news sharing. Findings showed that altruistic motivation was the main predictor of fake news sharing of COVID-19. Furthermore, other predictors i.e. motivation for information sharing, socialization gratification, motivation for seeking information and passing time were contributing in sharing fake news about COVID-19, while no relationship was found between entertainment motivation. This research suggested some theoretical and practical implications.
Topic:
Media, Social Media, News Analysis, Public Health, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Fake News
Political Geography:
Pakistan and Middle East

10. Translating tension: Chinese-language media in Australia

Author:
Fan Yang
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
Chinese-language media outlets in Australia are more likely to support Australian government policy than Chinese government policy when reporting on tensions in the Australia–China relationship, but editorialise to soften or remove criticism of China and the Chinese government. This is, in part, because Chinese-language media outlets in Australia produce little original content, and instead translate and reproduce the majority of their content from Australian, rather than Chinese, news sources. Chinese-language media professionals say they prefer to re-publish Australian content because this helps Chinese migrants integrate into society. However, self-censorship is embedded in these media organisations’ editorial processes. This is particularly the case for Chinese-language media outlets whose content is distributed to mainland China via WeChat, news apps, and websites. Outlets self-censor out of concerns for a loss of market share and reprisals from Beijing.
Topic:
Diaspora, Media, News Analysis, and Translation
Political Geography:
China, Australia, and Asia-Pacific