THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONFive Disinformation Tactics Russia Is Using to Try to Influence the U.S. Election
The White House’s recent exposure of Russian attempts to influence this year’s U.S. presidential election will come as little surprise to anyone who followed disinformation tactics during the last U.S. election. The practices alleged by DOJ has become standard practice in Russian attempts to influence international audiences.
The White House’s recent exposure of Russian attempts to influence this year’s U.S. presidential election will come as little surprise to anyone who followed disinformation tactics during the last U.S. election.
During the 2020 campaign, the Kremlin used its state-sponsored media outlets, the international television channel RT and the news website and radio station Sputnik, to pump out a raft of content calling the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process into question. Networks of Russia-sponsored bots and trolls were also found to have been pushing divisive disinformation and conspiracy theories in online networks.
This time around, the U.S. has seized a network of Russian-run internet domains, and sanctioned ten people including Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT (formerly Russia Today), for “activities that aim to deteriorate public trust in our institutions”. Sanctions include freezing any property or assets in the U.S., and potentially restrictions on any U.S. citizen or company that works with them.
The U.S. has also charged two Moscow-based managers of RT, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, under money laundering law with paying U.S. content creators to push out “pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation” in the U.S..
U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland said Russia was looking to create its “preferred outcome” in the upcoming presidential election, and undermine U.S. support for Ukraine in the war.
The practices alleged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) closely match what my co-authors and I have identified in our new book, Russia, Disinformation and the Liberal Order, as having become standard practice in Russian attempts to influence international audiences.
Here are five key features of Russian information manipulation we identified, and which can help understand the latest election-meddling scandal.
1. Using local influencers
The DOJ charges that RT employees paid a Tennessee-based firm nearly U.S.$10 million (£7.5 million) to produce social media content that aligns with Russian interests without disclosing that the funding ultimately came from the Russian state.
Several of the influencers connected to the Tennessee firm have since said they had editorial control over their content, and denied knowledge of any links to Russia. But this fits patterns identified in our research.
First, RT has long worked with the populist right-wing media space, and often mimics the style and practices of U.S. right-wing populist media. It frequently links to their pieces on its website and has promoted right-wing media personalities and distributed their shows, as well as featuring them on its own platforms.
