The Kremlin uses disinformation as one of its most important and far-reaching weapons. Russia has operationalized the concept of perpetual adversarial competition in the information environment by encouraging the development of a disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. Said ecosystem creates and spreads false narratives to advance the Kremlin’s policy goals.  Everything from human rights and environmental policy to assassinations and civilian-killing bombing campaigns are fair targets in Russia’s malign playbook:²

Distinctive Features of the Contemporary Model for Russian Propaganda

• High-volume and multichannel;
• Rapid, continuous, and repetitive;
• Lacks commitment to objective reality;
• Lacks commitment to consistency.

Truth disarms Russia’s disinformation weapons. The Kremlin creates and spreads disinformation to confuse and overwhelm people about Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Georgia, and elsewhere in Europe and Africa.

The difficulty of dealing with disinformation is that source credibility is assessed based on “peripheral cues,” which may or may not conform to the reality of the situation. A broadcast that looks like a news broadcast, even if it is a propaganda broadcast, may have the same degree of credibility in one’s mind as an actual news broadcast.

Under the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, inflammatory speech must pass a very high bar to be prosecutable under incitement - immediate and severe risk to a specific identifiable person. The U.S. does not have hate speech laws, and the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the freedom of speech.⁷

In January 2022, National Public Radio (NPR) conducted a survey, which concluded that 64% of the American population believes that U.S. democracy is in crisis and is at risk of failing. A strong indication that the situation is worsening is that over 70% of respondents in that poll said democracy is more at risk of failure now than it was a year ago.

One of the drivers of decreased confidence in the political system has been the explosion of misinformation deliberately aimed at disrupting the democratic process. This confuses and overwhelms voters. Throughout the 2020 election cycle, Russia’s cyber efforts and online actors influenced public perceptions and sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in voting, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of engaging in voter fraud. The “big lie” reinforced by President Trump about the 2020 election results amplified the Russian efforts and has lasting implications on voters’ trust in election outcomes.

The National Intelligence Council has found no indications that any foreign actor has interfered in the technical aspect of voting, such as voter registration, voting and casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting election results. However, spreading false information about the voting systems on social media destabilizes the public’s trust in election processes and outcomes.

In 2018, the Law Commission (“a non-political independent body, set up by Parliament in 1965 to keep all the law of England and Wales under review and to recommend reform where it is needed”) considered reform for criminal law to protect victims from online abuse. The scoping report noted:

“The anonymity (real or perceived) and the disinhibiting effect of the internet […] can also contribute to people saying and doing things online that they might not do in person in a communication offline. This might include explicit hate speech.”

The report’s focus and recommendations were not anonymous online abuse, just potential changes that could be made to legislation to make the prosecution of identifiable perpetrators easier.

The right to free speech is not absolute; one of its limits is the commission of hate crimes. At face value, a range of public order (and other) offenses to prosecute the behavior can apply equally in the real and digital worlds. Many options would be available while protecting freedom of speech as best as possible.

Riding a populist wave born of defeated expectations for a post-revolution democracy, President Saied took the helm of the Tunisian government in 2019 with a self-declared mandate to “renew confidence between the people and the rulers.” This spirit guides Saied and his dwindling supporters even now but comes expressed in bitter conspiracies, politically motivated arrests, and blatant lies. Saied, his state, and his supporters understand themselves as warriors against “traitors and the corrupt,” foreign meddlers, and all the other veiled figures who have supposedly “ruined the country during the past decade”—including, most recently, sub-Saharan migrants to the country. In practice, however, the president and his supporters are drivers of cyber-harassment and institutionalized repression of presumed critics, especially those from marginalized identities. Ironically, much of this repression now comes under the auspices of state efforts to fight vaguely defined “rumors” and “fake news” under Decree Law No. 54 of 2022.

Using forensic technology that was in part donated by the United Nations to “fight cybercrime,” President Saied’s government monitors critics online and arrests them for “conspiring against the state” once they publish something that fits the broad language of Saied’s anti-disinformation law, such as criticism of government officials, information about protests, or murmurs of revolution. President Saied then justifies violence against political outgroups by targeting them with conspiracy theories and dehumanizing rhetoric; in one case, Saied even labeled opposition figures a “cancer” that can only be “cured with chemicals.” And every time Saied claims to have broken up these conspiracies by oppressing members of the Tunisian political establishment, he strengthens his devoted base and cements his rule through “demoralization rather than enthusiasm,” convincing opponents that the risk of arrest is either too significant or that the latest conspiracy theory is simply not worth following.

Countries have taken different approaches to addressing disinformation in this and other contexts. Some, like Singapore, have enacted formal legislation; others, such as Argentina, have prosecuted individuals for disseminating fake news as a “crime against public order.” But there has been increased pressure on internet companies, mainly social media platforms, to monitor, identify, and filter “untruthful” content circulating on their networks. The willingness of these companies to accommodate the new demands constitutes a paradigm shift.⁹

The disinformation dilemma speaks to cultural, political, and legal weaknesses and strengths within each democracy. At the heart of the issue is a crisis of legitimacy among traditional knowledge producers. As legal scholar Jack Balkin writes, “A public sphere doesn’t work properly without trusted and trustworthy institutions guided by professional and public-regarding norms.” He argues that social media companies need to earn and develop that legitimacy while acknowledging that the same standards apply to societal institutions that traditionally have maintained public spheres and now struggle over questions of disinformation.

Politicians use dangerous speech amounting to incitement to violence or hate speech. The consequences are dire and may translate into physical and psychological harm. A prominent example was Trump’s speech on 6 January 2021, urging his supporters to march on the Capitol as Congress was certifying the results of November’s presidential election.

Although most states, including the European Union, reacted slowly to the increased threat of digital foreign election interference, there has been an apparent and needed intensification of efforts to tackle these issues in recent years. The voluntary restrictions taken by social media platforms can go a long way in mitigating the effects of disinformation campaigns. Therefore, it is crucial to work with the platforms and not against them.

“In the lead-up to the vote, rumors circulated on Facebook that polling station pens would write in erasable ink and that candidates were withdrawing from the race to support Nabil Karoui, a Tunisian media mogul who faced off with Kais Saied in the second round of voting and who spent almost the entire 2019 campaign season in prison on suspicion of money laundering. At some points, even Karoui’s candidacy was called into doubt, with false reports that he had also withdrawn or been released from prison. In investigative reports after the fact, both Facebook and the DFRLab at the Atlantic Council concluded that coordinated disinformation campaigns had targeted the 2019 Tunisian presidential election. One such campaign, known as “Operation Carthage,” among disinformation researchers, was even carried out by a pro-Karoui Tunisian journalist posing as a neutral fact-checker. Similarly, after internal investigations discovered ties to an Israeli political marketing firm, Facebook removed some supposed “fact-checking” pages targeting Tunisians in May 2019.

Since winning the 2019 election, Tunisian President Kais Saied has only multiplied the power and relevance of disinformation in Tunisia’s fraying democracy. As former President Donald Trump demonstrated in the United States, disinformation from the highest levels of government increases both the cost of fighting it and the damage it causes to democratic institutions. Tunisia’s situation is no different, and the United States and the EU continue to legitimize Saied all the same.”¹¹

“As Slovakia heads toward parliamentary elections on Saturday, the country has been flooded with disinformation, ranging from pro-Russian propaganda, lies about the situation in Ukraine and the spread of anti-migrant hate speech. Slovakia has been coming under a barrage of online disinformation. Days before the parliamentary elections of September 30 that could lead to closer relations between this country of 5.4 million people and Moscow, voters have been flooded with disinformation from home and abroad, especially Russia.

[…] Reset, a London-based non-profit, said it had registered more than 365,000 election-related disinformation posts on Slovak social media in the first two weeks of September. According to the non-profit, the posts violating social media terms of service and containing disinformation had generated more than five times as much exposure as an average post.   

The biggest spreaders of disinformation by far are Slovak politicians themselves – rather than influencers, Russian trolls, or conspiracy websites, said Peter Jancarik, co-founder of the Konspiratori.sk project, a public database of Czech and Slovak disinformation websites.    

He said the most significant victory for disinformation websites is not having more online visitors or becoming more popular but seeing their rhetoric taken up by politicians in the public sphere. "For many Slovak politicians, disinformation has become an everyday communication tool."

Former prime minister Robert Fico – a populist with pro-Russian leanings and a favorite in the polls, whose videos are among the most popular in Slovakia on Facebook, YouTube, and Telegram – is a prime example.

"Robert Fico manipulates disinformation to such a degree that even the most intelligent, cultured and well-educated Slovaks find it hard to understand," said Alain Soubigou, senior lecturer in contemporary Central European history at the Sorbonne.

Ahead of the election, Fico and the far-right Republika Milan Uhrik party leader have already warned voters of potential vote-rigging – a strategy also employed by Donald Trump in his failed re-election bid in 2020.     

Much of the disinformation circulating in recent weeks also serves Russian interests. On the campaign trail, Fico has said the war in Ukraine "started in 2014 when Ukrainian Nazis and fascists started murdering Russian citizens in Donbas and Luhansk" in east Ukraine – repeating a false narrative used by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to justify his invasion.

Along the same lines, Slovak National Party Chairman Andrej Danko said in July that Russian-occupied territories were not “historically Ukrainian.”

“These channels of Russian influence are not entirely new," said Soubigou. "A large part of the political class was formed during the Communist era, and links have existed beyond the Velvet Revolution of 1989" in what was then Czechoslovakia.”¹²

“[…] Orban’s ability to hammer his election message home, analysts say, is in large measure due to his government’s tight grip on what most Hungarians, especially those outside Budapest and other major cities, hear on the radio and watch on television.

State-run media marches in lockstep with the government, and many previously independent outlets have been bought up by Orban allies, said Eva Bognar, an academic researcher specializing in Hungarian media.

“There are concrete disinformation campaigns that are familiar to those who study Russian propaganda,” said Bognar, a program officer with Central European University’s Democracy Institute. In recent weeks, she said, “there were two main topics: the war in Ukraine and the election campaign, which was not unrelated to the war.”

In both cases, Bognar said, pro-Orban outlets employed “smear campaigns and disinformation — narratives that are in favor of and produced by the government.”

Orban’s brand of strident nationalism, promises of security, and culture-war fodder such as the demonization of LGBTQ people and Muslim migrants play better to a conservative rural base than it does in Hungary’s cosmopolitan capital, but even in urban areas, he has his devotees.

“He’s a strong guy, and that’s good for all of us!” said butcher Karoly Ludanyi, hefting a string of glistening sausage links a stall in Budapest’s landmark central market hall. “In the EU, they’re too liberal.” The war in Ukraine was unfortunate, he said, but “not our fight.”

Hungary, which has long signaled allegiance with ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine, has taken in tens of thousands of refugees from the war — but Orban’s government has portrayed their presence as posing no threat, a sharp contrast to its vehement objections to those fleeing wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Maria R., a secondary school chemistry teacher in a town outside Budapest, said she suspected that a few of her students, perhaps prodded by pro-Orban parents, seemingly tried to encourage her into making statements critical of government policies. She was sure they would report anything controversial, she said.

Fearing for her job, she said she resolutely kept her political views to herself and asked that her full name not be disclosed but felt saddened and demoralized at the idea that students, some of whom she has known since they were small, would seek to entrap her.”

“I feel like there is a bond that has been broken,” she said […]”¹³

“[…] Outside observers are often aware of Chinese attempts to influence Taiwan’s presidential elections. However, Taiwanese civil society activists such as Ttcat, co-founder of Doublethink Lab (a digital defense NGO and this author’s institution), identify the island’s local elections as being far more significant targets for China’s disinformation efforts. With Taiwanese voters set to elect candidates to fill over 10,000 offices, the information space is fragmented, which gives China greater scope to spread rumors and conspiracy theories through local communities. China also capitalizes on Taiwanese citizens’ lack of attention toward cross-strait relations in local votes. Chinese actors can intervene on behalf of candidates who espouse the value of closer economic ties with China, without these candidates suffering from fatal accusations that they will cede sovereignty to China. Elected candidates, especially city mayors, are then placed in prominent positions to challenge in the national and presidential elections held a year later. […]

Activists in Taiwan are braced for renewed Chinese efforts to interfere in the November local elections. Doublethink Lab has detected campaigns by Chinese actors to polarize Taiwanese society using false narratives regarding the origins of COVID-19 and incumbent government efforts to manipulate case statistics. Chinese-led disinformation campaigns are increasingly relying on YouTube as a medium for dissemination, the analysis of which calls for human coding at a scale that most watchdogs cannot presently muster. In advance of the November elections, Taiwanese society remains deeply polarized. […]”¹⁴