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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. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. A Mediatised Conflict: The Mediatisation of Palestinian Split in Pan-Arab Transnational Satellite TV Journalism

Author:
Hussein Alahmad
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Institution:
Sakarya University (SAU)
Abstract:
This paper explores the behind the scenes interplay between regional and Palestinian political actors through pan-Arab transnational satellite TV (PASTV) news media, during the Palestinian internal conflict sparked in 2007 between Fatah and Hamas. Primary focus is on the influential role played by PASTV journalism in shaping Palestinian political decision-making process during this interplay. The interplay between politics and news media forms the core discussion in the theory of ‘mediatisation’, which -informs the theoretical framework in this paper, also refers to such interplay as a struggle between ‘political logic’ and ‘news media logic’. Such a struggle reflects the difference between "neutral" and "participant" journalism, and how that might influence political processes and political culture. The paper examines, from an informant’s perspective, how such transnational political communication took place, also the aims each political player attempted to achieve through the mediated reality shaped in PASTV journalism. The paper demonstrates with evidence how the role played by PASTV journalism was not an accidental occurrence, but an extension of their regional financers’ interests in the conflict. While trying to reinforce the political clout of their Palestinian ally and maximize public sympathy towards his position, the exacerbation and perpetuation of the split become consequences.
Topic:
Media, News Analysis, Conflict, Journalism, and Palestinians
Political Geography:
Middle East and Palestine

8. 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

9. Taliban News: Fair and Balanced?

Author:
Janet Steele
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Policy Quarterly (TPQ)
Institution:
Turkish Policy Quarterly (TPQ)
Abstract:
At the Taliban’s first press conference on 17 August 2021, spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid startled the world by calling for “balanced and fair reporting,” claiming that the Taliban would support free and independent media as long as journalists worked according to Islamic rules and Sharia. In this essay, I argue that Western policymakers should take the Taliban spokesperson’s words very seriously, as his frame of reference is a set of powerful Islamic concepts that are likely to resonate with Muslim listeners throughout the world. It is important both to understand his words within the context of Islam, and to search for common ground in holding the Taliban accountable for what it has pledged.
Topic:
Governance, Taliban, News Analysis, and Accountability
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Middle East

10. The Futility of North Korean Propagandistic News

Author:
Sandip Kumar Mishra
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
Propaganda, among other tools, is a widely used means by the North Korean government to bolster the basis of its regime. The use of distorted news through inaccurate publications is one way in which propagandistic information is circulated within not only North Korea, but also in foreign countries online. In this commentary, Dr. Sandip Mishra, Associate Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, argues that the old way of propaganda negatively impacts North Korea’s reputation. To illustrate, Rodong Sinmun has disseminated inaccurate information on North Korea’s international reputation and its diplomatic relations with other countries; this has not been taken seriously by other countries. Notably, he argues that North Korea’s claims on its relations with India have been found to be based on inaccurate or nonexistent facts. The author emphasizes that North Korea must realize that they need to stop producing propagandistic news and focus on their political and economic reforms.
Topic:
News Analysis, Propaganda, Fake News, and Reputation
Political Geography:
Asia and North Korea